Reimagining Manhood for a More Gender-Equal World
By Claire O’Donnell, Together Women Rise Volunteer
The gender equality movement has spent decades expanding what is possible for women and girls, rewriting the rules of who they can be, how they can live, and what they can demand from the world. But there’s a quieter, unresolved gap at the heart of that progress.
Anyone who works in this space has experienced it: rooms filled with commitment and urgency, yet conspicuously missing men. While women and girls have been offered new scripts for who they can be, men and boys, largely, have not. Despite our changing world, the traditional “provider” identity is still the thing men most commonly name when asked what manhood means to them.
Gary Barker, president and CEO of Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice, believes manhood is malleable; “I keep asking the question: how can we bring out the best in it?” For the past 15 years, Barker and Equimundo have worked to advance gender equality and prevent violence by transforming harmful norms of masculinity, engaging men and boys as allies alongside women, girls, and people of all gender identities. Their work spans everything from reshaping how boys are raised, to how men show up as caregivers, to how workplaces and health systems treat gender equality.
Together Women Rise – a collective giving community dedicated to global gender equality — has been proud to support Equimundo since 2022, investing $350,000 through our Transformation Partnerships program. We believe that lasting gender equality requires addressing its roots, and that means engaging men and boys too. For our community, this partnership offers a unique opportunity to be part of a global movement reimagining manhood and building societies that are healthy, just, and free from violence.
That movement is gaining momentum. This May, Equimundo, in partnership with WOW – Women of the World, will convene 100 global changemakers in Rio de Janeiro for the MenCare Changemakers Summit: a four-day creative workshop designed to mobilize men and boys for gender equality and develop tangible solutions.
“Increasingly we are saying, let’s involve men. Let’s collaborate,” says Jude Kelly, founder of WOW. For 15 years, WOW has used arts, festivals and storytelling as tools for social change, and is now bringing that approach to one of the most complex challenges of our time. “It is entirely in my belief of women’s rights that I believe that men’s rights are important. We are all in this together. I think that is what we want to leave [this summit] feeling.”
The Summit marks the culmination of a year-long MenCare Changemakers Journey, through which these same 100 leaders–spanning policy, business, research, activism, arts, and storytelling–have been learning, collaborating and working toward a shared vision: advancing health and wellbeing for men and boys, alongside women, girls and people of all gender identities. Now, they will gather in Rio to put that work into action across seven thematic tracks, with gender-based violence prevention woven throughout:
- Caring online spaces
- Men’s health & health for all
- Men and care policies
- Caring manhood in workplaces
- Caring manhood in cities & regions
- Boys & education
- Democracy, violent extremism & tech-enabled harms.
The goal is to model how research, advocacy, storytelling, lived experience, and policy can work together to shift culture and make caring manhood not the exception, but the norm. As Barker puts it, “If we care for men and boys, men and boys will care for us, and for the planet, and for equality.”
The ask of those in the room is simple but significant: take this work back into everyday spaces, into boardrooms, parliaments, organizations, and communities, and turn ideas into action. Because when we step out of our silos and work together, we can offer boys and men a new script for manhood: one grounded in care, connection, and purpose.