Jaevion Nelson | Male marginalisation is a fallacy

People who are concerned about what's happening to our men and boys seemingly do not realise that constantly labeling their underachievement and disproportionate involvement in criminality and other social ills as"male marginalisation" prevents us from addressing the problems they face.

Male marginalisation is a fallacy. The collective failure of men and boys in our society is certainly not because people or systems are trying to hold them back (unless we are referring to specific groups who because of their vulnerabilities and belonging to actually marginal zed groups).

Simply put, male marginalisation doesn't exist. Nothing is more preposterous!

Typically, the narrative is based on the (low) academic performance of men and boys compared to women and girls, who make up a significantly larger portion of those enrolled in tertiary institutions in the country.

Additionally, they are also deemed to be marginalised because of their involvement and experience with crime and violence in society, the increasing participation of women in the labour force and their rise to power in the workplace (though there is an obvious glass ceiling which limits how far they can go).

Among those who argue that males are being marginalized, are scholars such as Prof. Errol Miller who presented one of the first pieces of work around 'male marginalization' in the Caribbean in the late 1980s. They posit tha two men and girls are being empowered at the expense of men and boys.

According to Miller, men and boys are at risk as a result of changes in how boys and girls are educated (i.e. the low number of single education to coeducational schools) and the allocation of scarce resources. He concluded that much of this is a result of an agenda driven by several stakeholders,including the World Bank and other development partners, which have, inter

alia, directed their resources to women and girls' development at the expense of men.

Social programmes skewed

Consequently, it is not uncommon to hear people bemoan that development and social programmes overwhelmingly favour women and girls though, from observation, such initiatives are seemingly organised around issues related to men and boys such as crime and violence in communities and their low

academic performance. I think someone should investigate the extent towhich the major social and community development programmes across the country, particularly those that are being implemented with foreign aid,prioritize women and girls vs men and boys and how the resources allocated might contribute to the adverse outcomes experienced by both genders.

I know gender equality can be a frightening concept for many of us. Quite often, we mask our unwillingness to share our privileged spaces, as men,with women in an eloquent remark about 'male marginalization'; that is deliberately premised on the misunderstanding of what's happening with our men and boys.

Truthfully, if we want to save our men and boys, we have to accept that, as a group, men and boys aren't being marginalized by systems and groups of people. We also have to avoid using male marginalization to describe what's happening with them. Doing so does not mean you do not believe there are some serious challenges bombarding them which need attention.

We can accept there is a crisis and design programmes that would deal with the root of the problem. Let's do something to save our men and boys without mislabeling the problem. The diagnosis has to be correct to get it right.

- Jaevion is a human-rights, economic and social justice and inclusive development advocate. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and jaevion@gmail.com.