Intervención social con hombres desde un enfoque de géneroun reto para las políticas de igualdad en España

Abstract

Gender, understood as the social and cultural construction of the sexual difference of human beings, varies between ages and societies. The social roles, spaces, attributes and expectations for women and men change over time, as has been demonstrated by anthropology and sociology, among other social sciences. Gender, as a category for analysis, has been used to explain and combat the inequalities between women and men since the second half of the 20th century. Additionally, it has been included in the design of public policies and it has become one of the concepts on which measures have been based to correct inequalities between women and men. However, the potential of the concept of gender and its implications has not been fully deployed. Even though it has been useful to explain the reasons for the discrimination and subordination of women that they still put up with in well-known societies, gender has been used as a synonym for women all too often, leaving men to occupy the place of that which is universal and human. The starting point of this thesis is the consideration that it is not possible to advance towards a more democratic society in gender terms without a change in men towards egalitarian and non-violent practices. The aim of this thesis is to analyze how the approach of gender towards men has been deployed from the public policies of promoting equality as well as from the social intervention on different social problems. From a theoretical frame offered by feminist theory and the critical studies of masculinity, emerging in Spain, we shall approach the gender construction of men. A construction that not only provokes violence and discrimination towards women but also a series of risks for the healthy and living development of men themselves in their potential as human beings. This thesis, which is presented as a compendium of five publications, intends to respond, mainly, to two research questions. First of all, regarding the public policies of equality and, specifically, how these have included men among their goals and measures. By means of a documentary analysis of state and regional equality plans, business equality plans and the different equality regulations, prepared in Spain since the 80s until now, it is recorded that this inclusion has been scarce over the decades although there are indications that the situation is changing. The second matter to address is whether Social Work, as a discipline and profession, has included an approach to gender towards men. By means of bibliometric and documentary analysis, they review, on the one hand, the curricular content of the qualification for a Degree in Social Work in Spain and, on the other, the articles published in scientific magazines of professional impact and interest in the field in the last 30 years. The results of these analyses indicated that the spaces for publication and research regarding social intervention in Spain barely perform gender analysis that takes men into account; and within the studies of Social Work degrees in Spanish universities, the inclusion of the analysis of masculinities and social intervention with men is minimal. This thesis also includes a proposal for action to offer keys to professionals that use the Project as a method to design execute and assess social intervention actions that include a whole gender approach which also includes men. Therefore, not only does it highlight what is not there or what has not been done but what may also be begun. All of this without forgetting one of the great paradoxes of social intervention with men: applying the perspective of the feminist gender to work with men means questioning the privileges of this as a social group but, at the same time, also recognizing that rigid gender constructions cause additional costs, problems and risks for them. The final intention of this research is to show the need for, in addition to violence towards women, “risk factors” for men to be analyzed and addressed from public policies and from social intervention spaces. This should not only benefit men themselves but also women and society as a whole in an historic moment in which an explosion of the feminist movement at a global level is combined with a neo-sexist rearming.