"The Men We Want to Be": the UAB launches a new Masculinity Work Space

The initiative was presented today at an event at the Rectorat building with speeches by UAB Rector Javier Lafuente and the founder and president of the Conexus Association, Oriol Ginés. Rector Lafuente stated that "achieving this new masculinity is a long-term challenge and not an easy one", as "it is a structural change that affects society as a whole". At the same time, he stated that "a good start is to ask ourselves what I can do as a man to help in this change".

Oriol Ginés, who is a psychotherapist and has worked with men, women and children who are victims of violence, explained that "gender-based violence is not only the violence suffered by women for the fact of being women, but also the violence exercised by men to become men, in an individual process of construction of masculine identity".

UAB secretary general Esther Zapater, in charge of equality policies at the university and also present at the event, stressed in declarations to the media that this is an initiative that arose "from the men of the university community" who want to "detect the consequences of a certain model of masculinity in relationships" and "work on an idea of a masculinity that can heal".

Training, care and awareness-raising

The Masculinity Work Space is being set up from now until December as a pilot project and it is planned to continue throughout 2024. It will offer training and individualised attention for the institution's students and staff, will promote a men's group against male violence and will carry out campaigns and talks to raise awareness on the subject.

Thus, the campaign "The men we want to be" promotes the will to change towards different gender relations from one's own subjectivity and, therefore, not from exterior impositions. It speaks of working on masculinity with the idea of motivating changes in individual behaviour through conscious empowerment, addressing a very broad spectrum of people. For this reason, it avoids pointing men out as violent, trying to avoid the rejection that this can provoke, and avoids the pathologisation that the use of concepts such as treatment entails.

In addition, the Masculinity Work Space provides the UAB with another instrument to transform sexist practices and behaviours. The UAB has a zero tolerance policy towards sexist attitudes that is conveyed through the Protocol to prevent and act against sexual harassment, harassment based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, and sexist violence, promoted in 2016 and updated in December 2022 with changes in the procedures to streamline the process and guarantee its efficiency by avoiding re-victimisation, and placing emphasis on support for the victims as well as reparation mechanisms.