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Men’s engagement strategies contributing to eliminating violence against women




The First National Australian Migrant and Refugee Women’s Alliance (AMaRWA) Conference with the theme “Eliminating all forms of Violence against culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) women” was held in Canberra from 28-30 April, 2013. The objective was to bring experts together to formulate a national policy framework on violence against women.


One of the sessions “Men, Criminal Justice and Community Responses” explored the current work on men’s engagement to address the mitigation of violence against women.


The first presentation by Dr. Mel Irenyi, Program Facilitator at the Marngoneet Correctional Centre, outlined the findings of the Inside Parenting Program to incarcerated men. Adapted from the Parenting Inside Out program of the Children of Incarcerated Parents Project, a working group of the Oregon Department of Corrections in America, the Australian program was a personal development and parenting skills program for men, in order to break their cycle of violence toward their children, as well as their partners.


The 12-week Inside Parenting Program provided cognitive behaviour therapy for participants that focused on family roles, problem solving, effective communication, emotion regulation, positive norm setting, emotion coaching, and empathy development strategies (using pregnancy suits and lifelike baby dolls). Over the past two years, 70 men have completed the program, and the results are beginning to show its potential as another tool, as an additional strategy, to combat violence against women.
The second presentation, by Tom Griffiths, family therapist at the Brotherhood of St. Laurence in Victoria, was a discussion on their Men’s Behaviour Change Program. The focus was on the men’s internal struggle to accept responsibility for their use of violence and presented strategies for engagement. The third presentation by Dr. Michael Flood, researcher at the University of Wollongong, also focused on the engagement of men.


Stating that there were few primary prevention initiatives in Australia directed specifically at men and boys, both presentations stressed the need for engagement. The reasons include: (1) men are largely the perpetrators of violence against women; (2) constructions of masculinity play a crucial role; and (3) men can have a positive role in helping to stop violence against women. The principles used for men’s engagement were: (1) pro-feminist; (2) enhancing boys’ and men’s lives; (3) acknowledging diversities and the spectrum of prevention strategies; and (4) addressing men’s experiences of changing gender dynamics at home, at work, in society, and between diverse countries.


www.amarwa.org


MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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