Public Seminar on Masculinities, Gender-based Violence Prevention and Gender Equality in the Global South

Sonke Gender Justice Network, Harold Wolpe Memorial Trust, and the Women’s Health Unit at the University of Cape Town will be hosting a public seminar under the title: Conversations on Masculinities, Gender-based Violence Prevention and Gender Equality in the Global South. The seminar is to be held on Monday 8^th August 2011, 17h30 to 19h30, at the Lesley Social Sciences Building, University of Cape Town. The speakers are Dr Gary Barker, founding director of Instituto Promundo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Washington, DC, USA who is also founding co-chair of the Global MenEngage Alliance; Mazibuko Jara, Senior Researcher in the Law, Race and Gender Research Unit, Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and Kopano Ratele, Professor in the Institute of Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa, who is also co-director of the Medical Research Council-University of South Africa's Safety and Peace Promotion Research Unit and member of Sonke Gender Justice Network board. Professor Diane Cooper, Director of Women's Health Research Unit in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at University of Cape Town will act moderator.

Fashioning Masculinity

Fashioning masculinity is an interdisciplinary event hosted by the University of South Africa’s Institute for Social and Health Sciences’ (ISHS) Programme on Traditions and Transformation (POTT) Changing Traditions strategic project. This event will be focused on men and the ways in which they are fashioned and fashion themselves.

Men fashion themselves every day, through the clothes they wear, the demeanor they inhabit and/or the bodies they build and groom. Men’s clothes and bodies signify social meanings like status, geographic location, race, ethnicity, affiliations, aspiration and generation. Even the absence of ‘conscious’ self-stylization is gendered. Both a mechanic in grease-covered overalls and a male executive in his uniform, the corporate suit express particular kinds of masculinity. Men’s bodies and clothing act as visual symbols of different types of manhood. Clothing and particular kinds of bodies therefore enable and produce articulations of differing masculinities. However, neither clothing nor the bodies of men exist outside of tradition as they are subject to a system of recognition. We assume a man in a suit is some kind of corporate executive and a man in grease-covered overalls is a mechanic as these are their traditional forms of attire. This event will look at this relationship between fashioning, masculinity and tradition.

Fashioning masculinity aims to enable interesting and inventive ideas to emerge about tradition and the traditions, historical and contemporary of masculine self-fashioning, men’s representation and stylization in the streets, media and fashion industry.

Fashioning Masculinity will launch the Changing Traditions Project 2011 theme - Changing Traditions: Everyday Lives of African Men. It is the first of three events and will culminate in the biennial travelling pitso in Ethiopia in November. Changing Traditions’ is a trans-disciplinary, international and Africa-centered undertaking that focuses on the traditions surrounding the production of wealth, identity, peace, and equality.

You are cordially invited to submit an abstract for Fashioning Masculinity. Please distribute the call for participation widely.

Deadline for abstracts: 25 July 2011

For further information contact:

Kharnita Mohamed kmohamed@mrc.ac.za 021 938-0478

Candice Rule crule@mrc.ac.za 021-938-0535