Widespread sexism translates into lower levels of investment in the education, health, and nutrition of girls and women. Institutionalized discrimination manifests in laws that keep land and money out of women's hands and thwart their access to protection and redress.
GreeneWorks seeks to overcome inequity by working to end child marriage, catalyze men and boys to promote gender equity, research gender synchronization programs, and use ICTs for social inclusion.
GreeneWorks is part of a global movement to end child marriage. Ending this harmful practice improves the well-being of each girl and enhances the development of families, communities, and nations everywhere.
Challenge: Nelson Mandela convened The Elders in 2007 "to help tackle some of the most pressing problems facing the world today." This group of human rights visionaries had been keen to address gender inequality as a major global problem. But they were uncertain about which aspects of this huge challenge to focus on.
Men and boys are essential allies in achieving gender equality and improving the health and development of women and girls.
Many sexual and reproductive health programs take inequality for granted, reluctant to promote women's rights and challenge stifling gender roles.
Greene developed a widely referenced framework to evaluate programs that involve men in sexual and reproductive health from a gender perspective.
Engaging Men and Boys to Address the Practice of Child Marriage explores the ways men and boys uphold this practice and through program examples, identifies the ways they are helping to prevent its underlying causes and mitigate its consequences.
Margaret Greene and Peter Pawlak worked with the ICRW on the Men and Gender Equality Policy Project, co-authoring a report on public policies involving men to promote gender equality. What Men Have to Do With It: Public Policies to Promote Gender Equality describes diverse policy responses countries have developed to address gender equality as more than a women's issue.
GreeneWorks is collaborating with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to develop strategies for working with men and boys.
Who gains from involving men in promoting gender equality? Margaret Greene and Peter Pawlak worked as consultants with ICRW on WHO-funded research to more fully assess the benefits of engaging men more fully.
Margaret Greene, Promundo, and Andrew Levack of EngenderHealth co-authored Synchronizing Gender Strategies: A Cooperative Model for Gender Transformation for the Interagency Gender Working Group. This report also describes the need to work with both men and women to transform the gender inequalities undermining health.
Many information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) initiatives focus on supply side issues such as Internet access, ICT infrastructure, and computer skills training. The desires of poor and marginalized groups are ignored. But projects incorporating the demand perspectives of ordinary citizens offer new possibilities for social inclusion.