Let’s Help Our Men!

Men. As a women, I am often told that they will never understand me and to be weary of their attention. However, they are struggling too. In recent times, feminism is on the rise and we often are so focused on trying to solve women issues that we disregard the fact that men have their own issues too.

Masculinity is gender topic where we get to discuss how men are struggling in this changing society and how important it is to help them as well. For centuries men were seen as the dominant figure, but now with “gender equality” becoming a global end goal, they seem to be floundering for a place in society.

Take education for example, schools used to seperate boys and girls all the time for activities and different “gender specific” roles. The boys were usually given tasks that require more hard labor, while girls were given tasks that took a more creative mind to accomplish. Now, it seems that even the education system is trying to change their ways. They are incorporating more gender neutral activites and allowing both genders to have a choice in what they want to do.

An all-boy school in Australia was studied because they have a history of producing the “ideal gentlemen”. They taught their students to become leaders and to mold the world in their image. Our children spend a majority of their time in an academic setting; we need to take advantage of that and use the times when they are in a classroom, expecting to learn something, to teach them that the roles of men are not so black and white anymore. They shouldn’t have to worry about choosing gender specific activities, since they should be free to choose what they love to do.

The teaching should not stop when the child leaves school. Once they are home it is the responsibility of the parents to continue to encourage them to bend the gender norms and to forge their own path. Fathers, are known to play an important part in any child’s life. For a girl, he can be seen as a protector and role model for her future spouse. For a boy, he is someone that the look up to and follow around to learn “how to be a man”.

Fathers are the ones who can use the relationship they have with their son and show them that treating a women equally and with respect is the right thing to do. The fathers are the ones who have lived through the generation that saw the changes in gender equality and it is up to them to teach their children how to become adults.

Sons look to their fathers for how to act in society; they crave their father’s approval and if they think that by giving women respect and equal changes will give them that approval we will start to see even more changes in society.