Understanding Masculinity in Lebanon
Date:
Conducting ground-breaking gender equality work requires the right information. At the forefront of national-level research in Lebanon has been the local research partner, Connecting Research to Development (CRD). In collaboration with UN Women and Promundo, the organization conducted the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES-MENA) research in Lebanon, the first multi-country study in the Middle East and North Africa to take a wide-angle lens on the lives of men – as sons and husbands and fathers, at home and at work, in public and private life – to better understand how they see their positions as men, and their attitudes toward gender equality. IMAGES has been essential in helping UN Women and its partners to support communities to positively impact gender equality.
Lina Torossian, Deputy Programme Manager, spoke to UN Women about the unique role and work of CRD in the Men and Women for Gender Equality programme.
“We were a group of researchers from different fields and we got together as early as 2011, to make changes in public health in Lebanon.”
“We were all doing research but not seeing substantive change on the ground,” Lina said, highlighting the organization’s core philosophy. “Now, with any project we venture into, we make sure that the oppressed groups are benefitting from partner programmes or directly from our research.”
“The simple fact that we went into national scale research was a big risk,” Lina said with a smile. “But UN Women’s trust in our ability made it possible. That’s what made it a success. Our research was scrutinized by high level experts in the field.”
Conducting the IMAGES research gave CRD a unique opportunity to gauge the perspectives of men who were open to collaborating on the struggle for gender equality, discussing cases of positive parenting and positive fatherhood, for example. Often, she said, CRD was working with partners who wanted to include men in gender equality, “but images of men beating women and using fear-led initiatives were their main practices… these practices just lead to failures [in progressing towards gender equality]. So, it was very refreshing for us to realize that what UN Women really wanted to advocate for is positive alternatives for men, and even suggesting well-known men to offer positive messaging. We knew it was time to change our strategy,” noting that UN Women’s focus on offering progressive behavior models for men was an exciting prospect.
After participating in the IMAGES-MENA research, CRD’s interest in gender issues has grown immensely, with an understanding that gender equality is central to positive development. Because of their increased attention to gender-oriented research, CRD has founded a gender unit of its own.
“We founded the gender unit during our work carrying out the IMAGES survey in 2016-17. In the unit, we plan to focus on research on unpaid care work [by women], early childhood development’s effects on gender attitudes, and the involvement of fathers in child rearing.”
She added, “Thanks to our role in the IMAGES research and cooperation with UN Women, we’re looking at gender as a crosscutting issue in all other areas of our research. And actually, because of our participation in IMAGES, all of our staff now intentionally involve a gender lens in our new projects, whatever the field. All of our staff talk about gender.”