Men Engaged in Gender Justice: Documenting Personal Transformation through Digital Stories.
There is a global call for men’s involvement in ending violence against women and girls, yet most conceptual and theoretical constructs on gender-based violence (GBV) are embedded and evolved in Western frameworks. Our work aims to de-center colonial perspectives that obfuscate the realities of intersectional oppression and “global north/global south” relations as they pertain to men’s active engagement in gender justice. In this presentation, collaborators from the Caribbean, Pakistan, Nepal, and Canada share insights on involving men in violence prevention efforts. Preliminary findings from our research, which uses a transnational and decolonial lens, explores local perceptions, social realities as well as culturally relevant practice models and motivation factors from men who are engaged in prevention of GBV in their communities. Men from each of the three regions have been invited to share their narratives through a process of digital storytelling (DST). Digital stories provide an intersectional lens to examine the impacts of gender, race, colonization, and other factors on how violence is produced, understood, and addressed in each context. Through engaging in this participatory process, we hope to reveal the shared experiences and influences of men, including their felt impacts, actions, challenges, and stories of personal transformation, that encourage them to pursue gender equity. The digital stories will be shared with the broader community to elucidate the context-specific histories, definitions, and strategies to move towards gender justice and address GBV. Our knowledge mobilization strategies are dependent upon collaboration and partnership in view of centralizing community-based ways of knowing and solutions to this pervasive social issue.