Inside Geneva
Inside Geneva is a podcast about global politics, humanitarian issues, and international aid, hosted by journalist Imogen Foulkes. It is produced by SWI swissinfo.ch, a multilingual international public service media company from Switzerland.
Inside Geneva
Toxic masculinity and the rollback of gender equality
It’s been 30 years since the Beijing Declaration on Women, a landmark agreement to empower women and girls.
“The Beijing declaration was such an incredible moment to say that enough is enough. Women are half of humanity and we have to be better,” says Lata Narayanaswamy, associate professor at the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds.
But now, some governments are rolling back women’s rights. Humanitarian programmes that help women and girls are being cut.
“During his first presidential term, Trump vetoed a new resolution proposed under the UN Women, Peace and Security agenda because it enshrined the right of women to their reproductive rights,” says Leandra Bias from the Institute of Political Science at the University of Bern.
What’s happening? Support for vulnerable women is being cut, and toxic masculinity is growing. The UN is worried.
“I am concerned about the resurgence in some quarters of toxic ideas about masculinity and efforts to glorify gender stereotypes, especially among young men,” said UN human rights commissioner Volker Türk.
This week Inside Geneva asks what toxic masculinity actually means. Is it even new?
“What worries me about the language of toxic masculinity is that it’s like, ‘Oh my God, we didn’t know this was coming.’ But it’s actually just a continuity of how violence and patriarchy combine,” says Narayanaswamy.
Is there a connection between toxic masculinity and the repression of women? Are both now identifiers for authoritarian regimes?
“‘We are the tough guys, we are actually the proper nations, while look at Europe, they have been completely emasculated and therefore they are not a model to aspire to.’ Therefore, democracy is also not a model to aspire to,” says Bias.
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Host: Imogen Foulkes
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This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, imogen Foulkes, and this is a production from Swissinfo, the international public media company of Switzerland. In today's program… Beijing 1995.
Speaker 1:program. In 1995 the world gathered in Beijing to take bold action for women and girls rights.
Speaker 3:These voices unified into the Beijing Declaration and.
Speaker 1:Platform for Action. If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all, the Beijing declaration.
Speaker 3:That was such an incredible moment in 1995 to say that actually enough is enough, because actually, you know, women are half of humanity and we have to be better.
Speaker 1:Planned Parenthood should absolutely be defunded.
Speaker 4:Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no? As a principle, there has to be some form of punishment For the woman. Yeah Trump, already in his first presidential term, with the UN Women Peace and Security agenda, there was a new resolution proposed and he vetoed that because it had enshrined the right for women to their reproductive rights.
Speaker 1:I'm concerned about the resurgence in some quarters of toxic ideas about masculinity and efforts to glorify gender stereotypes, especially among young men.
Speaker 3:What worries me about the language of toxic masculinity. It's like, oh my god, we didn't know this was coming. But it's actually just a continuity of how violence and patriarchy combine to justify then certain expressions of masculinity.
Speaker 2:The Orthodox Church and President Vladimir Putin are new best friends.
Speaker 1:The new Russia religious, conservative and deeply patriotic.
Speaker 4:I call this competing masculinities. So we are the tough guys, we are actually the proper nations, while look at Europe, they have been completely emasculated and therefore they are not a model to aspire to. Therefore, democracy is also not a model to be aspiring to.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Imogen Fowkes and in today's programme we're going to talk about toxic masculinity. And already I can hear you thinking why are we talking about that here in Geneva? Well, a number of reasons. First, just in the last few weeks, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Volker Tuerck, has warned about what he called a resurgence of toxic ideas about masculinity and efforts to glorify gender stereotypes, especially among young men. He blamed misogynistic influencers with millions of followers on social media who are hailed as heroes. At the same time, we are seeing deep cuts by the United States and indeed other traditional donors like Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, to the UN's humanitarian programs. But the United States in particular has singled out programs focusing on women, on gender, on diversity and on reproductive rights. We're also history check here, marking 30 years since the Beijing Declaration on Women. It set out a landmark global agenda for achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls. For achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls.
Speaker 2:So is there a connection between an apparent rise in what's been called toxic masculinity and a rollback of gender equality, and even a connection with a rise in authoritarian politics? To try to unpick this debate, I'm joined by two incredibly smart women. Lata Narayanaswamy, Associate Professor at the University of Leeds School of Politics and International Studies. She has just co-authored a report as part of Oxfam International's gender justice campaign. It's called Personal to Powerful, holding the line for gender justice in the face of growing anti-rights movements, and we're also joined by Leandra Bias. She's an advanced postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bairn's Institute of Political Science. She's done a lot of research on gender equality, the suppression of equality and how that perhaps connects with the rise of authoritarianism, with a special focus on Russia. Welcome to you both. Now, first of all, let's look at the term toxic masculinity, because it has become a bit of a buzzword, or buzzwords, if you like. How would you both define it? Leandra, in Bern, I'll come to you first.
Speaker 4:All right. Thanks so much, imogen, for the introduction, and that might be actually a little bit of a spoiler, because personally I don't use toxic masculinity in my research, but I think it is intimately connected to what in my field we describe more a rise of traditional values and how that shapes actually entire government's policy, both within and without. So, interestingly, I tend to always say phenomena like bloggers, like Andrew Tate, are incredibly important, but it might be at least equally important to point out the entire states, entire governments, have now programs both within their countries and now explicitly in terms of their foreign policy, which are built on an idea of very traditional, patriarchal and heteronormative way of life in which what I think popular opinion would then understand under toxic masculinity is glorified and promoted.
Speaker 3:Lata what about you? Yeah, I think obviously there is, just as Leandra said. I couldn't agree more with what she set out there, and I think, in a way, toxic masculinity is a buzzword that is trying to tell us something important about trends that are emerging that we're now seeing being escalated within state structures as well. So it's not just about individuals or groups of young boys or men. Other terms that are coming around this are things like manosphere, right? So social media enabling sort of hyper-masculine influencers like Andrew Tate that promote misogyny, oppose feminism.
Speaker 3:But it's really important for this idea of a gender binary and leading people to fall back into the trap of thinking that there is something innate or biological to gender that's linked, in particular, to behavior that's creating this toxicity. So, in relation to masculinity, that violence in particular is necessarily an intrinsic expression of that. So I think there's sort of something we need to tease out around here, because we live in a system that does have a tendency to produce these behaviors, right? So when we are invested in a gender binary as part of the relationship with what we might call in the jargon we call this heteronormative patriarchy, so we sort of center the idea that heterosexuality is normal and then within that we have patriarchy. So we sort of center the idea that heterosexuality is normal and then within that we have patriarchy, so sort of the systems that are designed to privilege male power, and then capitalism that then reinforces that male power, right.
Speaker 3:So there's a danger that we see this as something new, and I think that's what worries me about the language of toxic masculinity. It's like, oh my God, we didn't know this was coming. And it's a bit like me about the language of toxic masculinity. It's like, oh my God, we didn't know this was coming, and it's a bit like you know, but it's actually just a continuity of how violence and patriarchy combine to justify then certain expressions of masculinity, and I think that is something that we just need to keep. We need to hold that alongside the worry that has been expressed by Volker Turk, I think not unreasonably.
Speaker 2:I mean I think that's really interesting. This was one of my questions also is you know, how new is this? And I do take your point, lata, it's not new. We've had thousands of years of patriarchy. We women know this. But what is kind of frustrating is we also had from the UN, the Beijing Declaration on Women and we have seen some really great progress and then in the last few years I do think things have changed.
Speaker 2:I report from the UN in Geneva. I saw Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov go to the Human Rights Council I mean, it is a few years ago now before he got banned and sanctioned and talk about family values, which basically he meant was returning to this traditional, very traditional view of what is a man, what is a woman and what is an acceptable family. Now this year we have seen the President of the United States welcoming a man who has been convicted of violence against women. The Irish martial arts guy, conor McGregory, has been convicted in a civil court for rape. To me, that says something has changed. Or what was being in the process of denormalized is being normalized again. Leandra, do you have any thoughts on that?
Speaker 4:Yes, of course. I mean, I have, on the one hand, many thoughts on Russia, but in a way it's not so surprising that this is now being promoted and supported by the US. And even there I would fully agree, by the way, with Lata that it's really important that we historicize a phenomenon and that different ways of that phenomenon have existed before and for some a backlash was existing throughout this time because their rights were not granted ever. But with the US it is very much because the two countries have been at the forefront through different means of promoting that if we want to stick with the term, that toxic masculinity in an institutionalized way. Because while Russia was promoting it through the UN, we might remember, for example, trump already in his first presidential term, with the UN Women, peace and Security Agenda, there was a new resolution proposed and he vetoed that because it had enshrined the right for women to their reproductive rights.
Speaker 4:So we were already seeing that trend before, and so therefore it is not so surprising, especially when we then look at the organizations behind that agenda, and here I really mean they go by different names. It can be traditional values, it can be pro-family values, but if we look at the movement and it is a network. It is highly financed by both US evangelical organizations they make the biggest chunk of funding but also by Russian oligarchs. So in a way the two really go hand in hand. And that might be also a segue to show well, it kind of is innate to authoritarian worldviews. It kind of is innate to authoritarian worldviews.
Speaker 2:Lata, I see you nodding quite energetically there at what Leandra had to say. I mean, honestly, how have we got here? An alliance of evangelical groups and Russian oligarchs combining to oppress gender equality and women's rights?
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, I mean, that is the question, isn't it? We are in quite an extraordinary place and I'm sure Leandra, you're also, and Imogen having these conversations where we're all sort of going. I don't understand how we've ended up here. But again, I think it is worth just sort of pausing to reflect on what it is that we're experiencing and observing. I would say that there's probably still some continuity that's worthwhile reflecting on.
Speaker 3:I totally hear what you're saying, imogen, in terms of the Beijing declaration. That was such an incredible moment, years and years in the making, in terms of the kinds of movements that were coming together to make this case at the UN in 1995. To say that actually enough is enough, we need to make commitments because actually you know, women are half of humanity and we have to be better right, otherwise we're all kind of doomed. And that was absolutely right and really important promises were made at that time and it did unleash a lot of resource, and that is really important to recognize. But there is again here a note of caution, I guess, for me, which is that some of the signs were kind of already there and maybe what we're seeing is also just an extension to a wider group of people, because the question here also has to be which women are we talking about? So, leandra, you know you made the point that for some women there's never a rollback right, and I would totally agree.
Speaker 3:So this question of which women? So, when we consider how being a woman intersects with class and race, for instance, we can see that poorer and racialized women have been harder hit by austerity or, more recently, in the COVID pandemic, and that diminishing the resources they have to survive in turn leads to diminished capacities to access their rights and entitlements. We also know that as people move, rights also diminish. So people who are classed as migrants, whether they're deemed legal or illegal, have fewer rights than so-called settled populations.
Speaker 3:And this actually link is crucial because the instability unleashed by the 2007 and 2008 financial crisis is in fact a key pivot point for the more bold articulations of further and further right wing, ethno-nationalist agendas, because it kind of becomes an excuse to make what you were talking about Imogen these traditional family values as the sort of go-to solution to restore that sense of the lost stability, and that then tends to center on strengthening the heteronormative family unit as the common sense response to all this instability. If we could just get the basics right. If we could just go back to being regular, normal and for those of you who are listening, I'm doing inverted air commas normal families, actually, everything will be fine. I think that kind of everyday sort of tonal messaging actually resonates with lots of people.
Speaker 2:Leandra, as we said, you look particularly at the suppression of women's rights for gender equality, and that you see it as a tool in the toolbox of authoritarianism. Tell us a bit about that, because for some of us it's quite hard to see how gender equality should be a threat.
Speaker 4:Yes, and if I may just add to what Lata pointed out at the beginning, I am quite insistent on saying it's not just which type of women but I really use the term of Russia but also with a lot of the right wing movements we're seeing in the US, but also in Europe, it is very much a targeting of even more marginalized communities. So in terms of their sexuality or gender identity also, why is that a tool and how did that happen? It is really what we see now being emulated by other countries. I make the case that Russia is an extreme case that has foregrounded this toolbox and went, and I call it an extreme case because it is a country that unleashed a war of aggression in the name of defending traditional values, and so what we see there is an escalation in the sense that I really say it's a toolbox for an authoritarian government in different ways, because it helps you embolden, really enshrine an authoritarian regime in many ways. I will just pick up two. One is really you manage to, in Russia's case, discredit democracy, and so the way it works is that they view the international system in what I call this competing masculinities. So we are the tough guys, we are actually the proper nations, while look at Europe, they have been completely emasculated and therefore they are not a model to aspire to. Therefore, democracy is also not a model to be aspiring to, and what is left then is the antithesis.
Speaker 4:So authoritarianism, that's one, but in addition to that, they also promote nihilism in the sense of saying well, look, gender equality is not actually a human right, it is just a tool of power the West has used. What Russia does is really an instrumentalization of the term neocolonialism, which helps a lot to build alliances in the global South, where these grievances are real. And what plays in favor here is that we don't acknowledge Russia's imperialism. But so they say this is just a tool of the West to import into other native nations to make us implode from within, and therefore nothing here is really valid, neither gender equality but, by extension, also democracy. So it really helps to then say well, by consequence, the only thing again that is left is an authoritarian regime, and if you want your apparently innate traditional values to survive, you obviously need a strong leader, and maybe we'll get to that. But it goes as far as even justifying aggression.
Speaker 2:This narrative is actually having some success, isn't it, I mean, and particularly around the issue of gender. Having some success, isn't it, I mean, and particularly around the issue of gender? I mean, I have heard, on even some of the most respectable news programmes, analysts saying, oh well, we need to address the unhappiness of young men, as if it's kind of all our faults, and frankly, I have to say, on a very personal note, this makes me quite angry and I don't really see that there's something that we have done as women, that gender equality is what is responsible for their so-called misery and their desire to have their rights and I'm using inverted commas but now their rights back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, no, I was going to say. I mean, I think you know there is a sense that there is something existential happening for masculinity, which is where I think the toxic masculinity comes from. But I think one of the challenges of gender equality and one of the ways in which the right will frame this argument to kind of go back to your point, imogen is I think there is a tendency to kind of play this as a zero-sum game, and I can't remember who said it, so please come jump in if you remember, but that, whoever said it was, I think, very clever in that, you know, if you're always used to being on top or used to being the beneficiary of inequality, then equality feels like oppression, right. And so then you take that alongside the sense that everything feels like we're competing for everything, right, resources, attention, and then it's, you know, statistically it's like, oh, you know, women are outperforming men or getting meh, and so then equality starts to feel a little bit like something is being taken away from me. And then, when you're trying to reassert this gender binary, then gender equality and diversity become existential threats. But one of the reasons for that is, of course, the system that you want to preserve relies on a highly unequal gender division of labor. It relies on this gender binary that is premised on the idea that men do paid work.
Speaker 3:And it's interesting when I think about, you know, the way that Trump has been talking about, you know, bringing all the factories back into the US. It's part of painting this picture of a kind of re-industrialized US, where real men go out and do real work with their hands, with big power tools and make cars and dig oil wells or whatever he thinks, even though actually, a there's no plan for that and they don't even know what that means. But B if you look at the modern factory, actually so much is automated the kinds of jobs that those used to be. They may have been dangerous, but they were unionized, historically reasonably well paid. We can have our critiques about the breadwinner family, obviously, but you could at least in principle, say that families in whatever, whatever way they were formed, could probably live on one wage.
Speaker 3:Like some of that, it's lost. In whatever way, they're harking back to a traditional past. You couldn't reproduce it, whether you wanted to or not. So that doesn't even make sense on its own terms. But the reality is you have this nostalgia for this. You know, real men doing real paid work and women who are undertaking the unpaid and undervalued reproductive work. So then anything that talks about gender equality and diversity is just a kind of a foundational existential threat to the way the world works. And so you can see why attacking that, when you understand it in those systemic terms, you can see why attacking that becomes really, really important. I mean, it was astonishing to me that that was literally the very first executive order I knew about the anti-wook, but it really caught me off guard. I mean, leandra, I'm sure you have lots of thoughts about that, but I was genuinely taken aback that that was the very, very first thing that he did.
Speaker 4:If I may just add on your question of you know, are they tapping into like genuine fears and all of that? And I think that's always that's such a double edged sword because on the one hand, that fear stems from an unjustified entitlement, as Lata just brilliantly spelled out right, and on the other hand, of course we should be addressing it because it's to some degree perhaps still real. But when we address it, we must not be reinforcing that hierarchy that lies behind it. Like you can talk about those fears and how it may be destabilizing and how, indeed, masculinities should be in plural, and all you have been taught is that one form, the hegemonic form, the one that actually gets your reputation, the one that gets you up the ladder and the one that is based on toxicity. But there are other ways and empower men and boys to, yeah, well, embrace other forms which are just as it should be, should be also valued more valid.
Speaker 2:That I want to come on to, just as our closing remarks, because our listeners always do like to hear what they could do about the things that we discuss. But before we come to that I want to, because we are coming from Geneva and we talk about the United Nations I want both of your thoughts on what the UN can do, because we know the UN is flawed. But people do sometimes say if we didn't have the UN, if we got rid of it, we'd have to reinvent it. And if we look at some of the achievements slow but still since the Beijing Declaration in 95, maternal mortality has reduced quite substantially. There are more girls in education, and it's precisely these programs now which are having their funding ripped away. Have you got any thoughts what the UN can do to defend these programs, because I sense fear and panic in Geneva at the moment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's a great question. I couldn't agree more Imogen about. You know, if the UN didn't exist, we'd have to create it, and I think it's always dangerous to say, well, something's imperfect, so you know, we're just going to get rid of it. I think that's one of those babies in bathwater problems, and we're better off trying to preserve what works and fix what isn't rather than just saying that actually, this is not worth saving. I think the difficulty is and I think it goes back to Leandra the way that you were setting out some of the challenges in this space.
Speaker 3:The fact is, this escalation to these particular ideas and movements being expressed through state power is the big challenge, I think, within the UN. Because, obviously, if what we're saying is the UN is the multilateral space and everybody has a voice, the fact is there are some states that are expressing these ideas. So what, as the UN, are you meant to do? Because it would also be unfair to say, well, we're going to only talk about these issues in this way and sort of negate the ways in which other actors might want to talk about it, as unpleasant and unhelpful and regressive as we might find them. So my response to that generally is that we have to use the multilateral spaces to build those alliances, to make our voices stronger. The UN has to offer that openness to make our voices stronger. The UN has to offer that openness.
Speaker 3:But I also think there has to be something about reflecting on whether the UN itself is part of creating some of the economic consensus that underpins why these movements are able to exist in the way that they do.
Speaker 3:Right, we have to think in a much more creative way about why are things feeling so unstable. To think in a much more creative way about why are things feeling so unstable. How do we as a global society respond to things like economic crisis, war, conflict, and what we can see with all the conflicts going on in the world right now is actually the authority of the UN, in whatever limited way it exists, being severely undermined, systems of international law that are just being systematically ignored. So we need to come together as a global society and demand that the UN does at least say actually we have made some rules, we do have some norms, we have resolutions, we have these in place and we're actually going to insist that they are followed, because otherwise, actually, we lose the capacity to use that multilateral space as a kind of global commons where we can share ideas and work out how we solve problems together. So I think the UN does have a role, but we do have to think carefully about what role we do want it to play.
Speaker 2:What about you, Leandra? I mean, I do see the support for multilateralism and the idea that the UN can do anything diminishing fast.
Speaker 4:Well, I was just going to say.
Speaker 4:It's always like we speak about the UN, but behind that, at the end of the day, it's member states.
Speaker 4:So my first point would be and that's where I'm scared about it is that those who do claim to be liberal democracies are very much also going down the path of espousing some of those values and saying well, we are defunding those programs as well, or at least no longer attributing them the same priority. And since we are now in a spiral of militarization, well, gender equality can once again wait. So it should start from member states making that commitment real, and that, in my view, would then translate in the UN in two ways On the one hand, fund those advocacy groups, because those are the ones that in the end actually draft those resolutions, or at least the first draft, and help lobbying, fund the programs and then at least and I can only speak for the European context start having broader alliances and, if that commitment is actually real, go away from shying away to still push for progressive changes. We are in a time where it's barely fighting for the status quo.
Speaker 2:Very finally, as I said, because our listeners do always want to know this, when I was young, if you talked about women's rights, you used to get this cliched answer oh, you don't really like men, you know and I really feel that this is coming back a little bit. Women don't want to be on the defensive. So what can we do, young and old, to say you know what, you guys, you're going in the wrong direction.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would agree, that hasn't changed. And we see that in different forms. People are always defensive, mean we call here. We could call this male fragility or white fragility. It comes in different shapes and forms and I think part of the resistance is one grow a thick skin and then choose different times in different spaces. There are spaces where I at least specifically tone down, I choose a different language, I, yeah, I show empathy because, because it's not just fake. And then there are other spaces where we are with, I don't know, sisters in arms and we don't have to justify, and I think that's my power bank.
Speaker 2:Lata, what's your power bank?
Speaker 3:Oh gosh, I'm not sure about a power bank, but certainly like whether it's coming on to your podcast, imogen, or just any other opportunity. I just think we need to tell better stories, just genuinely. I feel like you know, whether you're in academia or you're in civil society, there's lots of pressure to we've got to be evidence based and I kind of think sometimes maybe you know part of, I think, the appeal of the right or to the traditional family is they're trying to tell a much more holistic, common-sense story about how they think the world should work. It's that sort of rose-tinted nostalgia, but actually you don't have to dig that far to know that that's just not how the world works and it's never worked that way, even within that rose-tinted nostalgia.
Speaker 3:But I want to tell a different story. I want to live on a planet that's not on fire. I want everyone to live the best life that they feel happy in, where they're respected and valued and loved, and I just want to do whatever it takes to live in that world. And I want to live, you know, with people, not just as an individual but as part of communities and societies, and not just my own family but other families.
Speaker 3:These aren't hard things to sell, but we need to have an opportunity and that's, I think, this, you know, the point about even the UN is that's partly where we can do that, because those groups are coming together. They're coming together in their family rights caucus and this grouping and that grouping, and coming along to make these big picture appeals to like family and rights and we need to tell those stories as well. We need to use those spaces to come together, not in our silos, but together and say actually this is the world I envision and gender equality is good for everybody. It doesn't just make my life or women or LGBTQ people's, it makes everybody's life better. It makes the world better and I'll take any opportunity to tell that to anybody who'll listen, because I do believe it, not just from an evidence point of view, but in my heart, if I'm allowed to say that.
Speaker 2:Well, I would actually go along with both of you there. I have to thank you because we're just almost at the end. Lata and Leandra, thank you very much to our listeners. Write to us inside Geneva at swissinfoch to comment on this programme if you like. I'll leave my final thought. As I said, I agree with you both. I think we do need to tell our stories, and one of the things we need to reclaim is what the idea of a happy family is. It's not necessarily a man, a woman and two children. It can be all sorts of things, all equally good. Somebody can work, somebody can't work equally valid. On that note, thank you all for listening. A reminder you've been listening to Inside Geneva, a Swiss Info production. You can subscribe to us and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our previous episodes how the International Red Cross unites prisoners of war with their families, or why survivors of human rights violations turn to the UN in Geneva for justice. I'm Imogen Folks. Thanks again for listening.
