Chapter 5: Opportunities to engage men in primary prevention

Willing, capable and confident: men, masculinities and the prevention of violence against women highlights that many men understand the harms caused by social pressure to adhere to the Man Box rules. However, there is uneven understanding across communities about the role that some expressions of masculinity play in perpetuating such harms. A variety of structural, social and cultural circumstances influence men’s sense of their own capacity to act to address the gendered drivers of men’s violence against women. Still, many participants described wanting to prevent or repair negative impacts of harmful masculine norms for their loved ones, their communities and themselves.  

This chapter summarises the key findings from the focus group data collected as part of the Man Box 2024 study. We discuss what these findings reveal about opportunities to further strengthen and better support strategies to help men actively participate in primary prevention efforts. In doing so, we highlight considerations for future work aimed at improving men’s engagement in action to prevent violence against women and gender-based violence.

The analysis presented throughout this report shows that many study participants identified examples of how the gendered drivers of men’s violence against women play out in the places where they live, work, learn and socialise. They also identified examples of homophobia, which drives violence against LGBTIQA+ people (11). They described the interplay of these drivers with factors that are known to increase the risk of violence against women occurring where the gendered drivers are present, such as alcohol use (1). Many participants expressed how these examples caused them discomfort and did not align with their personal values. These findings correspond with those presented in The Man Box 2024, which show that men’s personal endorsement of almost all Man Box rules is lower than their perceived social pressure to conform to those masculine norms (13).  

Participants described the barriers that impeded them from acting against or speaking up about these pressures, including fear of being excluded from social networks; other punitive consequences from peers, family members, partners, managers or employers; or causing disharmony or awkwardness within a group. Importantly, several men also described feeling encouraged to disrupt harmful norms in contexts where they were confident that healthier expressions of masculinity would be accepted or even embraced. This included knowing that a friend would support them if they challenged sexist or homophobic commentary in a peer group or knowing that organisational culture and policy in a workplace or sports club explicitly rejects gender-inequitable attitudes and behaviours.  

These findings align with those from other research and practice evidence that show that the ways men express attitudes and behaviours related to gender norms are not fixed but are shaped by their social environment (9, 10, 13, 38, 118). They also support recent research that refines the idea of a ‘moveable middle’ in primary prevention (119) through illustrating that men respond to masculine norms differently according to context, stimuli and assessment of relative risks and benefits resulting from the views they express (120).  

This combined evidence foregrounds the importance of efforts to support men to foster ‘positive, supportive male peer relationships’, an essential action for addressing violence against women (1 p 63). Primary prevention efforts must acknowledge the richness of men’s lives and relationships, and provide further support for practice approaches that appeal to the value men place on their friendships, family relationships and intimate partnerships, and their connections with colleagues, teammates and community (38).

Where men feel greater pressure to conform to harmful gender norms, the value they place on maintaining their social safety can mean that they dismiss, ignore, reinforce or encourage violence-supporting attitudes or behaviours. Conversely, the findings presented here support the assertion made in primary prevention frameworks that shifts in individual attitudes and behaviours are more likely to be sustainable when structural, institutional and organisational change enable them and when there is a critical mass of support for practising healthier versions of masculinity – from family members, partners, employers, friends, workmates, the media and online networks (1, 2).  

In the remainder of this chapter, we discuss five key findings drawn from the discussions presented in this report:

• Men see and understand the benefits of emotionally supportive, safe and equitable intimate partner relationships for themselves and their partners.
• Fathers understand how gender norms can influence their parenting and impact their children.
• Men’s families and social networks can support them to let go of harmful ideas about what it means to be a man and can encourage healthy forms of masculinity.  
• Men’s increased openness to discuss their mental health and wellbeing can be built upon with gender-transformative primary prevention efforts.
• Workplace initiatives, cultures and reforms provide opportunities to challenge harmful ideas about what it means to be a man.

We consider what each of these findings reveal about strengthening collective approaches to help men engage more actively in primary prevention efforts.  

The findings are intentionally framed as strengths-based, to highlight their potential for helping men see themselves as capable of challenging the gendered drivers of men’s violence against women. We do this with the aim of contributing to increased understanding of the ways that men’s willingness, capability and confidence to engage in gender-transformative action for prevention can be supported through systemic, structural and settings-based efforts (footnote 1).

Key finding 1: Men see and understand the benefits of emotionally supportive, safe and equitable intimate partner relationships for themselves and their partners

This report finds that men seek to live in more gender-equitable and emotionally supportive households and relationships than those that they grew up in and around. They want to be in fulfilling intimate partnerships where they can emotionally support their partners and feel supported in return. Some men also value the ways in which relationship norms have become less restrictive over time. These findings demonstrate widespread willingness to move away from adherence to masculine norms that prohibit men’s emotional vulnerability or constrain gender-equitable partnerships in households and intimate relationships.  

However, many focus group participants shared that they still find it difficult at times to put into practice. Even where men expressed desire for genuinely equal relationships, they also described pressures to conform to harmful gender stereotypes around, for example, men as breadwinner and women as carer, or men needing to be an emotional ‘rock’ for their partners.  

This suggests two avenues for prevention efforts to connect with men. 

Support men to acknowledge and express their full range of emotions in healthier ways, including in their relationships.  

The men who participated in focus groups spoke about valuing mutualised emotional connection and support in their intimate relationships. This suggests that helping men to consider what it is that they value and aspire to in their relationships, what they might do better and how social pressures might be holding them back is a promising entry point through which to connect with some men in the context of primary prevention efforts.  

Efforts to shift persistent framing of healthy emotional expression or help-seeking as weak and/or feminised remain an important area of focus for primary prevention. Focus group participants stated that they are cautious about how and with whom they share personal challenges, largely because of their concerns about judgement from other people. For heterosexual men, this included women as intimate partners as well as other men.  

This aligns with findings in The Man Box 2024 showing that men aged 18 to 30 with low or moderate endorsement of Man Box rules were more likely to seek help from formal supports, such as a GP or helpline, than from informal supports such as a friend or partner (13 p 103–5). It is encouraging that a high proportion of survey participants reported that they would seek professional help for emotional or personal problems. However, when placing focus group discussions into context with these findings, this also suggests that many men continue to be uncomfortable with sharing such problems with those close to them. Social pressure for men to be tough and stoic can impact their ability to be emotionally vulnerable within their relationships and in other parts of their lives. For some, this tendency to process difficult emotions through the lens of staying ‘tough’ and maintaining control can result in domineering behaviours which are, or can become, violent or abusive (121, 122).

Encouraging more men to self-reflect on what they value or hope for in their relationships and the ways pressures to adhere to unhealthy masculine norms are holding them back from achieving those aims will help to address these behaviours. It will also contribute to collective efforts to change norms and build men’s capability and confidence to help take further action in prevention.

Support men to learn about different approaches to resisting stereotypically gendered roles in relationships.

Focus group participants shared their desire to co-create more equitable relationship and home dynamics and to be supportive partners. These discussions suggest that many men are eager to have more conversations about barriers and enablers to more equitable intimate partner relationships.

Men in this study reflected that many heterosexual couples no longer agree with attitudes that support distinct gendered roles for men as provider and women as homemaker. Despite this, they described the ways that they perceive and internalise persistent social pressure about the role of a ‘good man’ as the primary financial support for their families. Even in households with dual incomes, persistent beliefs that household labour is feminine can lead to women taking on the dual burden of unpaid household work in heterosexual relationships while also contributing financially to the household (10, 50). Indeed, data show that women in Australia still bear a disproportionate share of unpaid household labour (1, 10, 50, 123).  

Broader social and family networks, as well as workplace policies, structures, cultures, and regulations can reinforce men’s experience of pressure to conform to rigid gender roles. These create practical and affective constraints against men taking up more caring and household responsibilities and in doing so, reshaping roles in their households.  

There is an ongoing need to address structural and institutional constraints through policy and workforce reforms (2). Alongside this, these findings suggest it is important to support men to learn from others’ experiences of resisting gendered social pressures that do not align with their desire for more gender equal households and relationships. This work must attend to the ways that the different identities men hold, or communities that they belong to, might inform their pathways to change.  

To assist in these efforts, there is a need for reciprocal learning and coordinated sharing of practice knowledge generated from community-led approaches to working with men. These might include programs or initiatives from LGBTIQA+ community-led organisations, Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, faith-based community organisations, diaspora community organisations, organisations for and led by people with disability, youth-led organisations, fathers’ groups or parenting groups, and older men’s groups across the state (124–126). This information will help to generate more multifaceted and intersectional understanding about helping men to be part of positive change for their families and translate to more effective, tailored supports.

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Key finding 2: Fathers understand how gender norms can influence their parenting and impact their children

The focus group discussions with fathers demonstrated that many men take pride in actively engaging as equal parents and seek to be good fathers. Prevention interventions and strategies that engage men as fathers are well placed to transform men’s attitudes towards and engagement in parenting. These efforts will help to reduce pressures to conform to rigid gender norms for younger generations, as men begin to model healthier ways of being a man to their children. The findings of this study highlight several opportunities for prevention work with fathers to achieve these outcomes.

Ensure parenting initiatives are inclusive of and resonate with men across the life course

Some fathers in the focus groups described being congratulated for actively parenting, a reflection of the persistent stereotype that men are not natural or primary parents or caregivers. Institutions may reinforce these stereotypes. For example, some hospitals prevent men, as the partner of a birthing mother, from staying overnight following the birth of their children, limiting opportunities for fathers to experience crucial bonding with their baby and to build confidence around care (127). Similarly, programs and structures designed to support new parents often focus on, and sometimes solely communicate with, mothers (128), which may also discriminate against parents who are LGBTIQA+ (129). Together, these actions position the parent giving birth, usually the mother, as the natural and inevitable ‘primary’ parent from the outset (130, 131).  

These findings point to the importance of systematically including fathers and other caregivers in parenting initiatives at different stages of the parenting journey and across the life course (132). Opportunities to engage fathers include the maternal and child health system, antenatal education, early childhood education, schools and parenting groups, as well as consumer advocates for health system reform. Some initiatives for new parents already explicitly set out to work with couples together (132). Despite this, fathers often feel – or are – excluded from these settings or are unable to commit to participating in these initiatives due to structural barriers such as limited access to parental leave or flexible work arrangements (40, 133). There remains a critical need to understand and address:

• service providers’ potential bias or resourcing limitations that serve to inhibit fathers’ ability to participate in infant care
• normative factors that might inhibit men’s uptake of available services, including workplace cultures that tacitly or overtly penalise men taking on more caring duties.

Support fathers to build positive relationships with other fathers

Many men in our study shared that they grew up with models of fatherhood that reflected rigid and sometimes harmful beliefs about how men should behave. Some participants stated that they hope to parent without imposing rigid gendered expectations on their children, in deliberate contrast to how they were parented. However, they noted that it could be difficult to find opportunities to meet or gather with other fathers who parented in ways that reflect these values.  

These findings suggest the importance of helping men to build supportive relationships with other fathers, and the potential for those relationships to be spaces that build men’s capability and confidence to parent in ways that progress actions to prevent gender-based violence. Early childhood development and parenting programs, as well as fathers groups, online support groups for fathers (65) or other peer networks can facilitate engagement between fathers in ways that role model and build their comfort with enacting healthier masculinities. These programs can also encourage men to reflect on how to resist social pressures that are linked to unhealthy masculine norms and harmful individual beliefs and actions (1, 38). These efforts can help to foster more confidence among men to parent and contribute to household responsibilities. Importantly, efforts to support healthy engagement between fathers should not come at the expense of ensuring sufficient supports for mothers, nor detract from the importance of enabling supportive interactions between parents of all genders.  

Support fathers to reflect on and challenge intersecting forms of bias that influence parenting

In Chapters 3 and 4, we illustrated ways that the transition to fatherhood can permit and even encourage men to reflect on harms resulting from pressure to conform to rigid gender norms. These include those pressures that limit men’s emotional vulnerability, or that seek to enforce heteronormativity and cisnormativity. Fatherhood can provide opportunities and motivation for fathers to recognise and defy these pressures and to practise more flexible and equitable parenting than they experienced growing up.

As seen in the focus group discussions, fathers still experience pressure to align their parenting to rigid gender norms. For some this corresponds with their personal beliefs or biases, and this was particularly visible in discussions about the prospect of a child coming out as gay. Some fathers said that they would ‘not encourage’ a child’s LGBTIQA+ identity. This is homophobia framed as tolerance, but several participants expressed their aim was to protect their child from anticipated harm if they were to identify as gay or otherwise LGBTIQA+. This fear, which may also be used to mask participant’s own fear or shame around having a gay child, translated to men describing their intent to pressure their children to conform to heteronormative scripts. That is, fathers’ recognition of the broader potential harms of heteronormativity and cisnormativity translated to a desire to discourage that child from accepting their sexual or gender identity, replicating those same harms within the family.  

These findings highlight the importance of using gender-transformative approaches to support parents/fathers to reflect on their prejudices and how these can negatively impact upon children. These approaches should include explicit efforts to disrupt heteronormative and cisnormative scripts in programs providing support to parents, and they should provide guidance for men as fathers to address homophobia or transphobia heard from other parents.

Key finding 3: Men's families and social networks can support them to let go of harmful ideas about what it means to be a man and can encourage healthy forms of masculinity

This report highlights the importance of changing social structures and cultures to support men to build their confidence in resisting pressure to conform to rigid gender norms in a range of interpersonal contexts. Here are three approaches effective prevention efforts can take.  

Build better evidence about effective approaches to help men enact healthier masculinities with peers, colleagues and family members of different ages and genders

Our findings illustrate that men take a range of possible consequences into account when assessing whether to challenge harmful gender norms across different contexts. For example, focus group participants described how some peer group settings foster expressions of emotional vulnerability and other healthier expressions of masculinity, while other social dynamics uphold stereotypical masculine norms. Within their peer groups, men described how their desire to maintain relationships and group cohesion shaped their decision-making and behaviours. This finding aligns with evidence that shows how stereotypical masculine norms are often upheld in social and relational contexts including in male peer relationships (87).

It is essential to continue to support men to feel confident to reject pressure to conform to rigid masculine norms, and to accept more flexible relationships to those same norms from men around them. Some studies have found that boys with close friendships can better resist pressure to comply with masculine norms (134, 135). This suggests that more strategies are needed to normalise closeness and emotional support within men’s social and family relationships at all ages (134, 135). For example, strategies may include targeted efforts to shift pressure to comply with gendered expectations that men should be stoic and self-reliant no matter what. Shifting these masculine norms may encourage men to seek help more proactively for challenges, and express vulnerability to peers, partners and family, and in doing so, signal to other men that these healthier and freer enactments of masculinity are possible.

The need to enable healthier expressions of masculinity among men is not limited to face-to-face interactions. Many people, in particular young men, seek to build community and connections online, including on social media platforms, online forums and interactive gaming forums (71, 118, 136, 137). This invites more consideration of how online spaces might present an opportunity to role model and encourage healthier expressions of masculinities within men’s peer relationships (118). These efforts may help to serve as a counterpoint to the very real harms of the ‘manosphere’ – online spaces that have been shown to reinforce harmful gender norms, exacerbate resistance to action against the gendered drivers, and foster misogyny and the condoning of and perpetration of violence (10, 73, 138).  

Help men to translate their understanding of gender-based violence into actions that support prevention

Some focus group participants demonstrated their awareness of different forms of violence against women and family violence, and their awareness of the ways these were linked to the drivers of violence against women (without using the ‘driver’ terminology). For example, some participants identified and discussed men’s control of finances as problematic or highlighted the problems that result from the ways that emotional vulnerability is gendered across society. Similarly, several participants identified the gendered nature of the different forms of harassment and abuse that women experience. However, this awareness did not necessarily translate into the men’s willingness, sense of capability or confidence to take action to address the gendered drivers. This was particularly the case when they assessed the perceived personal risks as being too high, such as when there was feared potential for damage to a friendship or being penalised at work.  

This finding is encouraging in that it shows that many men want or intend to do more to help to prevent gender-based violence. However, it also highlights that there is more to be done to help build capability and confidence across the population so that people of all genders, including but not limited to men, can more comprehensively see their role in addressing the gendered drivers of violence (21). Moreover, institutional, structural and systemic changes must be sufficient to support and sustain actions from individuals.  

Primary prevention sector and government actors can continue to tailor strengths-based approaches to settings-based efforts. The aim of this work is to ensure that messages resonate with men, feel relevant to their lives, and centre their agency in taking steps to disrupt the gendered drivers of violence against women, and to disrupt the ways these combine with other forms of structural discrimination to shape the determinants of violence for different cohorts of the community (1, 8). This last point is critical. One of the limitations of this study noted in Chapter 2 is that it did not elicit sufficient insight into how men navigate rigid masculine norms through their intersections with ableism; racism; colonialism; homophobia, transphobia, transmisogyny, biphobia and intersexphobia; and classism. Ongoing and future work that considers barriers and enablers to men’s active engagement in primary prevention and strategies to better support men’s active participation should attend to how men’s lived experience shapes their understanding of and engagement with efforts to prevent gender-based violence.  

Support men to examine their resistance to normative change and to counter resistance from others

The findings from this study invite broader consideration of what informs the defensiveness of some men at their perception of being categorised as perpetrators by virtue of their gender rather than their personal behaviour. This highlights the need for the prevention sector as a whole to consider more effective ways of translating the difference between addressing harmful masculinities as social norms that are upheld by people of all genders and working with men and boys as individuals and cohorts. The sector should also continue efforts to support men to self-reflect on the ways that they, as individuals and as members of communities, can actively help to address the social, relational and structural conditions that allow violence to occur.

As explored in Chapter 4, defensiveness can refocus discussions from how to prevent violence against women to whether a man is ‘as bad as’ a perpetrator in a media report. In doing so, this affective reaction from men can help to entrench misconceptions about primary prevention, such as that it seeks to make teenage boys accept culpability for an adult man’s choice to abuse a woman (139). This is not to suggest that prevention practitioners should seek to avoid causing discomfort for men. In any social change work, discomfort is inevitable as we consider ways that our position in society has meant we have been complicit in structural oppression or missed opportunities to create positive change and what we might do better in future (34).  

Approaches to productively and effectively navigating this tension are already front of mind for many prevention practitioners; further strategies and resourcing are required to measure and translate impacts of promising approaches over time and across different settings. Importantly, as the focus groups highlight, some men are able and willing to engage in prosocial bystander action to counter different forms of resistance in their peer networks, such as speaking out against homophobic commentary. However, men’s assessment of what they can do in a given situation can vary by context. To inform their decisions, men weigh up several factors, such as perceived social consequences or risks to physical safety they may face as a result of taking a particular action. These findings highlight the importance of mutually reinforcing prevention efforts and supports that help men to build the skills and confidence to intervene as active bystanders. This might include encouraging men to consider different perspectives when thinking about risks and mitigation strategies, and identifying subsequent opportunities to take action that minimises the likelihood of similar behaviours or problems occurring in the future, even after the immediate issue has passed (55, 140).

Men who hold positions where they can directly influence institutional, systemic and structural change are an important audience to keep in view for settings-based prevention efforts generally and initiatives that focus on addressing resistance to normative change more specifically (17, 55). More men in leadership positions are taking on these roles, achieved through decades of effort across settings from prevention practitioners and gender equality advocates. However, there is more to be done, including more comprehensive steps towards more diverse gender representation in political, organisational and community leadership (141, 142). Where leaders can communicate the necessary and achievable actions that can be made across organisations and systems, prevention practitioners and peers can also help individuals reflect on where they can do more to enact positive change. 

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Key finding 4: Men's increased openness to discuss their mental health and wellbeing can be built upon by gender-transformative primary prevention efforts

The findings in this report illustrate synergies across efforts to address the gendered drivers of violence against women and promotion of men’s mental health and wellbeing. The Man Box 2024 found that rigid masculinities are associated with poor mental health outcomes, with men who more strongly endorse the Man Box rules more likely to report frequent symptoms of poor mental health (13).

In Chapter 3, we discussed the ways that mental health promotion efforts that target men can help to normalise men’s ability to resist some harmful masculine norms and feel more equipped and capable to express vulnerable emotions or seek help for problems they may face. There is potential to consider ways that primary prevention of violence against women and gender-based violence efforts might intentionally build upon these disruptions to men’s adherence to some Man Box rules.

Harness mental health promotion efforts that resonate with men to invite reflection about the pressures they feel to conform to rigid gender norms.

Focus group participants described the ways that widespread normalisation of discussions about men’s mental health and wellbeing has helped to increase some men’s confidence in disrupting or rejecting some of the Man Box rules. Public discussions of mental health in workplaces, social media and podcasts seem to have contributed to shifting social pressures for men to be tough or stoic and encourage them to begin to share a fuller range of emotions in their peer groups and in other settings.  

Men’s mental health initiatives may not prioritise gender-transformative approaches in discussions of attitudinal or behaviour change in the same way primary prevention programs do. Mental health and wellbeing initiatives can provide an avenue to foster greater engagement with some actions to address gendered drivers but not all. They are therefore not a proxy for primary prevention efforts, but it is possible to strengthen co-benefits of mental health promotion for addressing the gendered drivers. These include potential positive outcomes from men developing healthier ways of expressing and regulating their emotions, and fostering supportive male peer relationships (1). There may be potential to translate the skills and confidence that men gain from engagement with these initiatives into more comprehensive reflection on their relationship to rigid masculine norms and ways that they might take other action to progress prevention of violence against women and gender-based violence.  

Men in this study named the positive influence that different forms of media such as podcasts and social media had in terms of modelling and normalising expressions of healthier masculinities, including in the context of discussions of men’s mental health. This finding adds texture to necessary discussions in prevention policy and practice about how to address the ways that online content, social media and traditional media can amplify and reinforce the drivers of violence against women (73, 143–145).

Key finding 5: Workplace initiatives, cultures and reforms provide opportunities to challenge harmful ideas about what it means to be a man

Men across all focus groups illustrated ways in which workplace legislation and regulation, organisational policies and cultures can create environments where men feel more willing and safe to resist pressure to conform to harmful masculine norms, as well as being more capable of doing so. These dynamics can be fostered through the following efforts.

Continue structural and systemic workplace reforms that challenge harmful gender norms

There are several areas where continued structural and systemic reforms will help to address harmful gender norms, including with regard to preventing sexual harassment and gendered wage discrimination, which is likely to disproportionately impact women with disability and women who experience discrimination because of their race or ethnicity (43, 146–151). Contributions from men in the fathers’ focus group discussions, presented in Chapter 4 of this report, focused on the need for further action to address the structural and normative disincentives for men to take up greater caring duties. Participants suggested that they wanted to play a more active role in their child’s life, with one man describing caring for his son as ‘a joy beyond limit’. However, taking up opportunities to increase household responsibilities is balanced against the projected financial, social and career penalties that they may anticipate. This aligns with other studies which document the structural factors that reinforce rigid gender roles in the home, such as the gender pay gap (1, 10, 123) and limited access to parental leave and flexible work arrangements for fathers and other non-birthing parents (50, 130). In other focus groups, men discussed the differences in organisational culture that they encountered in male-dominated workplaces and more mixed-gender workplaces. Several men noted that where they had more women colleagues, they felt less judged for behaving in ways counter to rigid masculine norms. This was common across men in trades and men in (or aspiring to) white-collar work.

To engage in unpaid care work for their children or another family member, men need to be supported structurally and socially to work flexibly or take meaningful and equitable periods of parental leave. This support must include efforts to increase the perceived value of care work, particularly in comparison to paid work. It is just as important for women to be provided more equal opportunities for promotion and wage parity, including through policies that account for time away from the workforce due to full-time care work. This is necessary for several reasons related to equity and minimising risk of economic insecurity for older women and the toll that this creates for individual women, families and communities (152–154). For some households, it may also help to address questions of financial viability related to men’s flexible work if both parents have similar incomes, and both parents face the same wage, superannuation and career development considerations. Where the material differences are less clearly gendered, it may be easier to identify other normative and cultural barriers that limit men’s uptake of flexible work options within organisations and across communities.  

This demonstrates the importance of concurrent and mutually reinforcing efforts to shift gender norms across different levels of society. Changes to legislation and government policy are important levers as:

• they set clear standards for employers and set out worker entitlements
• organisational uptake and promotion of equal access to flexible work and parental leave helps to change the culture of workplaces and model better practices for others in the community (131, 155)
• whole-of-population efforts to destigmatise and normalise men taking on more unpaid household labour make it more likely that men will take advantage of workplace entitlements.  

Each of these actions are critical for achieving meaningful and sustainable change.

Build workplace cultures that foster healthier masculinities  

Findings from focus group discussions suggest that in male-dominated workplaces, stoic or aggressive interactions between colleagues remain normative, and sometimes these are based on excessive consumption of alcohol or involve the denigration of women through street harassment. In these workplaces, sexual harassment or other harmful behaviours are more likely to be challenging to address or may even be condoned (156–158). Importantly, the focus group findings highlight that individual men often view these workplace cultures as unhealthy and undesirable. Participants discussed how they feel more capable to challenge these cultures when they perceive that they have the capability and confidence to do so, for example, if they feel they will be backed by other men or their employer, and will not suffer career or financial consequences. Inversely, they described how they might participate in hypermasculine cultures or became passive bystanders when the risk of not being seen to belong or of speaking out was perceived as too high. The intentional cultures fostered by organisational leadership and workforces are therefore influential in shaping the nature and extent of the permissions that men have to challenge the behaviour of men that they work with.

This was illustrated by focus group participants who spoke about how observing equitable behaviours from their bosses helped men to feel confident that they had permission to enact similar behaviours. Management can, for instance, encourage men to take up the opportunities offered by gender equality policies; increase the acceptability of healthier norms such as norms that encourage expressions of vulnerability and emotional support in the workplace; and ensure congruence between workplace policies and programs and day-to-day actions and experiences. These deliberate changes in workplace culture can shift the way men perceive they are expected to behave at work and beyond. 

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Future directions: strengthening how primary prevention efforts engage with men

These findings illustrate opportunities to help men who are already questioning or disconnected from some harmful masculine norms to take more action to help prevent violence against women and gender-based violence. They are avenues for primary prevention efforts to help increase men’s willingness, capability and confidence to resist and ultimately help to reduce social pressures to conform to Man Box rules.  

For many people working in primary prevention policy, program design and practice, the findings of this report are likely to affirm decades of experience and practice evidence that speak to the barriers and opportunities related to engaging men and boys in gender-transformative work. They also show the importance of consistent, mutually reinforcing and values-based messages that meet men where they are – where they live, work, learn, socialise and play. To conclude this report, we set out three domains for expanded effort to improve collective application of these findings.

Consistency and coordination

The findings presented in this report demonstrate that men’s social environments play a significant role in determining their sense of capability and confidence to challenge or resist pressure to conform to harmful masculine stereotypes. This highlights the importance of amplifying and extending the reach of prevention efforts that help to address rigid gender norms and build men’s capability and confidence to move away from the Man Box rules.  

Coordinated implementation, expansion and regular review of existing policy and legislative reform is key to ensuring that harmful forms of masculinity are rejected across settings and social contexts. This might include:

• monitoring whether, how and why men use initiatives such as paid parental leave or flexible work options
• developing national guidelines for early childhood and parenting programs, with a focus on healthier masculinities, gender equality and transforming gender norms
• leveraging the existing reach of respectful relationships education across schools to expand focus in curriculums on healthier and harmful gender norms and consent education, with a view to fostering critical reflection on healthier masculinities for young people.

Successful primary prevention ensures the sustainability of efforts to support men who have perpetrated violence or who are at risk of perpetrating violence, so that they can change their behaviours. These efforts are scaffolded by mutually reinforcing primary prevention interventions. That is, where peers, colleagues and families do not tolerate unhealthy expressions of masculinity, there is higher likelihood of men being able to sustain positive outcomes from men’s behaviour change programs. The importance of coordinated effort across prevention, early intervention, response and recovery is captured in national and state policy frameworks (2, 3, 7). However, there are still challenges across many areas of the country in facilitating reciprocal learning across different practice areas that work with men or that are focused on encouraging healthier masculinities. Further work is required to build information-sharing opportunities that are coordinated and embedded into policy and practice development.

Understanding what works

It is critical to continue to build evidence about what works to shift harmful social norms and cultures of masculinity across whole populations and in different settings and places with different cohorts. This includes practice evidence about what helps to build men’s willingness, capability and confidence to take action to address the gendered drivers of violence against women (159). It also includes research into the collective impact of work focused on men and masculinities across the family violence continuum, such as investigating what might help to build the willingness, capability and confidence of men who highly endorse the Man Box rules to engage more in actions to address the gendered drivers, which was out of scope for this study.

Building such a rich body of evidence requires adequate and sustained funding for monitoring and evaluation of different programmatic interventions, impact evaluations that consider the cumulative effect of different prevention efforts across communities and over time, and academic and community-led research. These efforts must foreground an intersectional understanding of where challenges and opportunities for improving prevention outcomes exist for different cohorts.

Equally important, the findings from knowledge building efforts need to be tested in policy and practice discussions. This helps to validate and apply lessons (or knowledge) and will ensure that emerging understandings of barriers and solutions to engaging with men in prevention can be applied in policy reviews and practice design (44).  

Supporting media to build men’s willingness, capability and confidence to be part of prevention

Focus group participants named the positive influence of some media content on their capability and confidence to resist pressure to conform to rigid masculine norms, particularly in relation to emotional expression and stoicism or toughness. This finding demonstrates that there are more opportunities for different media actors to improve public literacy about necessary actions to address the gendered drivers, and about the actions available to men to help them contribute to prevention of violence against women and other gender-based violence.  

This is a related but separate aim to that of ensuring that news reporting about violence against women and family violence is accurate and does not cause harm. There are extensive resources to support those working in media – including journalists, editors and producers – to report on violence against women in ways that challenge the gendered drivers of violence, address misconceptions about the gendered nature of violence, and reinforce the message that violence against women is not tolerated (160–162).  

There is a broader imperative for media and social media to contribute to addressing harmful gender norms. Content that men consume can help them to see where they are part of solutions to end gender-based violence, provide tools and language to actively address the gendered drivers in different settings and contexts, may help to increase confidence to express emotional vulnerability, and foster reflection about how they can change behaviours that align with rigid masculine norms that harm those around them or themselves. 

Conclusion

This study shows the importance of refining what is meant by ‘engaging’ with men in primary prevention to consider the different tiers of supporting men’s active participation in actions to address the gendered drivers of violence. In Chapter 1, we introduced categories of how gender-transformative social justice movements might approach engaging with men, as set out by Casey and co-authors:  

• outreach to and recruitment of previously unengaged men
• changing men’s attitudes and behaviours
• social action to end violence as part of broader gender justice work (21).

We identified the outcomes of each of these categories of effort as:

1. building men’s willingness to do more to address the gendered drivers of violence against women and intersecting drivers of other forms of gender-based violence
2. supporting men to build their knowledge, skills and capability so that they know how to help prevent violence against women and other gender-based violence across different settings and relationships
3. ensuring that men feel confident to put their willingness and capability into action and to support others in their lives, particularly other men, to do the same.

The accounts from participants in this study indicate that among men who are already questioning some or all of the unhealthy masculine norms described in the Man Box rules, there is considerable willingness to do more to address rigid gender norms and to interrupt cultures of masculinity that valorise dominance and control in peer groups, families and workplaces. However, we need to do more to ensure men are capable of and confident in putting that willingness into action. We also need to do more to understand the programmatic, policy and campaign efforts that are most effective for different cohorts across our communities in promoting men’s active engagement.  

This study also highlights the critical role that men’s social and familial relationships play in determining how and when they act to address the gendered drivers. This is an important contribution to ongoing improvements to primary prevention approaches, as it recentres the significance of understanding men in the context of their social connections and the ways that seeking to protect those connections can shape behaviours. This is well evidenced – and captured as a key area of focus in Change the story (1, 10) – but can be easy to lose sight of in the context of equally important discourse about changing the attitudes and behaviours of individual men across the community, particularly those who are already perpetrating violence. Both approaches are needed; these findings reinforce that continued work to support individual men to change their behaviour through early intervention and response interventions will be more likely to yield sustainable, positive outcomes where the gendered drivers are rejected across peer groups, workplaces and families.  

Overall, these findings reflect positive shifts in men’s attitudes towards harmful masculine norms across Australian communities, and they demonstrate the potential to expand this progress through ongoing efforts to build men’s willingness, capability and confidence to take action against the gendered drivers of violence against women and gender-based violence. 

Footnotes