Gender equality from a men’s perspective

Mats Berggren

Worked with equality issues since 1996. Was international project manager for several equality projects financed by the Swedish aid agency SIDA. Hired as a trainer and expert by Karolinska Institute and Region Stockholm regarding equal parenting support. Started Father groups in Stockholm and Sweden in 1996. Married and father of four children and grandfather of 7 grandchildren.

I have always had a commitment to equality and have become aware that the norms that we men and women are shaped by, and brought up to, affect how it is possible to change this.

My basic philosophy is that boys and men must open their eyes to equality from a men’s perspective! That gender equality is not a women’s issue but a societal issue where we as boys and men can and must take greater responsibility for the work with gender equality.

It is important for us men to look at equality from our own perspective and stop seeing it as a matter for “the others”.

In some parts of the world, gender equality has made great progress mainly in education, politics and the public sector. Sweden, as an example from my country, for example, has the highest female employment rate in the world, but at home, the distribution of unpaid work, then it is often much further to equality. This means double work for women, which affects health, despite the fact that half of mothers of young children work part-time, and as a thank you for their efforts, women receive lower wage growth and a lower pension. And that is not ok in a modern society that we all want.

As I see it, we men need to get involved in equality, not only because it benefits women and children, but also because it benefits ourselves. Patriarchal norms and values also harm us men, for example, macho norms limit our ability to feel inwardly and make our own choices, patriarchal norms lock us into boxes that are difficult to break out of.

As men, we are born into a superior role and inherit a lot of privileges that we did not ask for! We can, on the other hand, make active choices and use the superior position and privileges to change ourselves, dare to say no to patriarchal norms and expressions, consider speaking up when we see others being affected and eventually contribute to an equal society.

With knowledge and information, we can also create the understanding that change begins with ourselves!

I have a lot of experience working/involved with men and boys, both nationally and internationally. After more than 25 years of work, I now know that conversation is what changes behavior and attitudes.

In my conversations, I aim to peel away the jargon, question and challenge, the notions of how men and women should be or mothers and fathers are expected to be. And when I do that, I’ve noticed that inside the shell there is a person who longs to be part of it. Who yearn to be empathetic, nurturing and meaningful.
I myself started working with father groups at 1996. My family; I my wife and our 4 children, worked as an emergency foster home for 5 years between 1996 and 2001. 16 children came to us during those years. Small children. The youngest was one week and the oldest 11 years. Common to these children was that they had absent fathers. The mothers of these children were more or less accused by society of failed parenting. Reasons for starting an investigation and for the children being taken into care could be mental illness or drug addiction.

But where did the fathers go?

Why weren’t they there when they were needed most?

How can we men leave our children so easily?

And why don’t we condemn men’s failings in parenting as much as we should?

That is the biggest reason why I started father groups to have the opportunity to meet men. Discuss responsibility and participation. Talk about parenthood not happening by itself. That relationships with children should not be the child’s responsibility.

The father groups activity that I started in Sweden at the end of the 1990s is a very good example of an opportunity to meet men in conversation mainly about parenting but also about norms, equality and change. Around the time when you have children is also an example in men’s lives where the window for listening is open. This window is not open that many times in men’s lives. Most of the time it is closed and we men think that we don’t need to feel around, ask for help or search for answers. We can handle ourselves and know best ourselves. But on certain occasions, usually negative and difficult events such as a divorce, we are dismissed from work or we receive a severe illness diagnosis. But the window also opens on positive occasions such as when we fall in love or when we have children.

So this very fact that the feeling says that the upcoming, or new, parenthood will be a more or less major change in life means that there is an opportunity for listening and new thinking. This is where the father groups offers conversations that often become contemplative, thoughtful and, in some cases, vulnerable. And with that, there is also a chance for curiosity to change norms and in many cases, there is also a positive change.

In 2007, I started working internationally. Thanks to the SIDA project, I got the chance to go to Russia and St. Petersburg as my first assignment. It was then that I met Nikolai Eremin, who over the next 10 years would turn out to be a very close friend and colleague. Nikolaj and I started trainings for father group facilitators, inspired by the experience I had from my work in Sweden. Nikolai then continued this activity on his own with great success in St. Petersburg but also in other regions of Russia where he was hired as an expert in various social projects.
My own work with implementing father groups in Belarus during the years 2013-2021, Nikolai was a central figure in the start-up, together with the Ukrainian gender equality expert Volodymyr Martseniuk, where the intention was that we would use both Swedish, Russian and Ukrainian experiences of starting and run father groups. This became a very successful project and work that engaged thousands of Belarusian men in father groups, where equality and norm change were a clear goal in the activity. That activity now lives on after the end of the project and has become a natural feature of the Belarusian parenting support at the social centers around the country.

As a summary, I would like to end like this;

Many men are tired of the male image that they are expected to live up to or the father role that they have been brought up to. People yearn for change and it is viewed globally and not an observation from a single country. I have personal experience from the Nordic countries, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and several countries in central and southern Africa. And it is during the safe conversation that this change has the opportunity to take place.
Father groups are one of the best, easiest, and cheapest ways to reach men to discuss masculinity, fatherhood, and norms. It would be unethical of us men who have the opportunity not to try to contribute to that change because in most cases this benefits everyone. Both women and men, but perhaps above all the children. And the children are our most important target group, we who work with equality and parenting support. A change that increases gender equality in families where responsibility is more evenly distributed both with paid and unpaid work where expectations and demands are equally distributed and violence in families ceases. And that change is a right. And all children deserve that.