8.L. Skills building seminar: How to operationalise ‘masculinities’ in gender-transformative reproductive healthcare?
Authors:   Organised by: Manfokus Projekt, Bielefeld University (Germany),   Chair persons: Julia Zielke (Germany), Joseph Strong (UK)
Published: October 2021

Reproductive health care has been described as feminised and, in a neoliberal fashion, focussing on the individual patient rather than on their various relations within health care infrastructures, wider community and close social ties. In this context, there seems to be an implicit assumption of what a man actually is; namely partnered, cisgendered and heterosexual who are, generally speaking, not considered reproductive. As a consequence, men's sexual and reproductive health and rights are often marginalised and not meaningfully included in (co-)managing their own and their community's health outcomes. Furthermore, gender-transformative health scholars warn from possible pitfalls including simply ‘bolstering' gender onto existing policies, and continuing to look at men's and women's health as monolithic practices that are cordoned off from wider structures of intersectional inequalities. Within this area of research, the sociological concept of masculinities argues that gender is inherently relational, that means gender identity is not an inherent feature to ‘a' body but emerges and changes in response to its specific environment. It recognizes power imbalances within a hegemonic order and between genders. Looking across, beyond and between simple variables is therefore an essential skill to develop gender-transformative health care. Skills for gender-inclusive public health scholars must lie in developing a community-driven, feminist-inspired, rights-based approach, avoiding to fall back onto familiar assumptions as to how men do health, and demonstrating a radical openness towards new types of co-constituted masculinities. Specifically, this workshop operationalises masculinities in health care, building skills on four levels: conceptual framing of research; study and method design; data analysis and theory building; responding to broader societal discourses.

The workshop will take the following structure: (1) Icebreaker (7 min): Participants present their own definition of masculinities; we reflect on assumptions and emerging questions; (2) Capacity Building (23 min): Chairpersons hold a presentation on a) social implications of a focus on masculinities within public health research; b) How men are marginalized in reproductive public health and why this affects everyone; c) and real-world implications of how gender-blind health research and care; Collaborative learning (15-20 min): Participants critically reflect on short excerpts in public health discourses on what men (supposedly) do and are (e.g. policy documents of UN and ICPD) and why certain depictions might be problematic for all and why; (4) Reflections, implications (10 min): We reflect on learnings, and on what we can do in terms of public health research methods, policy and practice; (5) Post-workshop: Participants are granted access to a shared folder with further readings and can continue to formulate policy and practice through a dedicated online space.

Key messages

We highlight masculinities as avenue towards gender-transformative reproductive health care, building skills for public health researchers and practitioners. We open up a collaborative platform and galvanise the political impetus towards gender-transformative best practices across health care.