“Joseph and I are bewitched”: Why men struggle to sustain gender equity under patriarchal culture

Weeks ago, Women Probono Initiate, a women’s rights organisation, ran a series of public engagements on the role of men in promoting gender equality.

One of the striking perceptions, however, was on how men who promote gender equity were seen as having been bewitched by their wives. So, how exactly can a man promote gender equity without the denigrating suspicion of being under the influence of wicked forces?

One of the events that I was honored to facilitate, convened participants from the national legislature, and district and lower local governments across the country.

Through our collective reflections, I shared three short stories about men in everyday life with the hope that perhaps we could unpack some of the commonly taken-for-granted stereotypes about men, reveal hidden silence on masculine fragilities and vulnerabilities, and make a case for why men need to be part of the gender equality conversation not as ‘helpers’ of women and girls but for their own benefit in creation of a gender-equitable society.

The first short story was a personal reflection on how, in 2012, I was aptly involved in the care of my newly born daughter in the special care unit at the hospital.

In the three-week experience, I was not only the lone male caregiver in the special care unit, but also some of the female caregivers reported me to the doctor on duty for allegedly taking care of only one baby.

Being a male in the care unit, they thought I was part of the medical team. It was clear the female caregivers could not imagine involvement of the father in this delicate stage of the baby.

The second reflection was an imagination of a man in the sitting room. In some of our traditional homes, you can picture a man [household head] seated alone in the sitting room, listening to the radio.

On the other side of things, is his wife and children in the kitchen, cooking, telling stories, laughing and living. Highly attracted by the vibe in the kitchen, the man in the sitting room makes an attempt to join the kitchen crew.

This action is not only met with utter silence but also some of the kitchen crew walking out on his arrival. Yet the man in the sitting room is often seen as in a position of ‘privilege and power.’

We need to ask ourselves: how does cutting a lonely figure, in seclusion, listening to radio announcements of bereaved families announcing the passing on of their loved ones constitute masculine privilege?

The third story was my personal recollection from a visit in a remand home in 2023. During the visit, this particular home housed six females and 135 male juveniles. These statistics raised questions on why it is that young males are overwhelmingly getting into conflict with the law, the underlying root causes of this pattern and how this masculine proneness remains taken for granted in highly patriarchal communities.

While my personal and collective reflections received different reactions from the audience, it was Joseph’s submission (a male district councillor) that caught my attention.

Having been supportive of gender equity in his community, Joseph told us how my stories reminded him of how he was labelled by fellow men as having been bewitched by his wife.

In fact, a neighbouring participant in the meeting commented that after my submission, it seems Joseph was not bewitched alone. In his eyes, Joseph and I were bewitched. Such is the dilemma of pro-gender equity that male behaviour attracts in patriarchal settings.

Suspicions on progressive male behaviour can be harboured by both men and women. Both men and women police gender and enforce social expectations about being an appropriate man or woman.

On the one hand, some men think of such behaviour as unacceptable masculine behavior (not man enough) presumably inspired by women’s invoking of supernatural powers to control men.

On the other hand, men who question patriarchy are subjected to scrutiny by some women, doubted if they can ever rock their own boat and in some cases labeled ‘patriarchal manipulators’ who can easily reproduce patriarchal behaviour even within feminist spaces if they have not done deep work of dismantling their internalized dominance.

Such is the dilemma that reminds us how hard it might be for men to embrace care, concern and emotional responsibility, for it is said that the only emotion patriarchy knows is anger.

I recall scholars such as Robert Morrell who wrote that while there are overwhelming instances where masculinity is historically implicated in inequalities and injustices, it is not all men who threaten peace, democracy and harmony but, rather, particular constructions of masculinity that legitimize the use of violence, assertion of power and the rights of men over women and children.

It is also notable that there is not one but many forms of male behaviour and that masculinities can and often do change. We have recently seen new models of male behaviour that underscore fatherhood of presence – men being present in the lives of the family, in particular children.

There is an increasing realization of the value of families for men and men for families. Regardless of whether these are mega changes enough to trigger a revolution in values about manhood, care and concern, it is change worth leveraging.

We only need to ask ourselves: what kind of material and cultural support do men require to sustain a gender equitable lifestyle in a patriarchal culture?

How prepared are they to navigate social costs (e.g., perceptions of being under the influence of women-engineered witchcraft) of being a different man? Only then shall we envisage the possibility of change together.

amonmwiine@gmail.com

The writer is a senior lecturer at Makerere University.