On the last International Men’s Day, November 19, a man expressed his disappointment at the scant regard paid its observance at his workplace, as opposed to the ubiquitous pink and frilly fanfare that is normally associated with International Women’s Day.
“When it’s Women’s Day, people receive so many donations of food and all kinds of other things,” he moaned. “For men, we get a few Heinekens but only after I begged HR.” I tried to explain that although I believe the story of feminism isn’t all good, International Women’s Day is a century-old tradition that celebrates women’s entrance into the world of work and our exit from unfair gender roles. But maybe it was not about the beers. Perhaps this low-spirited man’s complaints represented a yearning for male empowerment in Saint Lucia, a resentment of inflexible local stereotypes.
Two weeks ago, I met with Mrs Geralda Bray of the St Lucia Planned Parenthood Association. When our conversation came to the subject of the males in our society, she sighed: “We have a such a struggle with our men!” She talked about their reluctance to undergo medical check-ups, their legendary neglect of their health. “If their ability to have sex or to go to work is not a problem,” she said, “they consider visits to their doctor unnecessary, if not unmanly. They think it’s masculine to tough it out with symptoms, however painful.”
The SLPPA’s concern is not unique to Saint Lucia. A World Health Organization bulletin—The Men’s Health Gap: Men must Be Included In The Global Health Equity Agenda—states: “In most parts of the world health outcomes among boys and men continue to be substantially worse than among girls and women. Yet this gender-based disparity in health has received little national, regional or global acknowledgement or attention from health policy-makers or health-care providers.”
The bulletin included data from an international study, and concluded that the male attitude to healthcare may account for why women outlive men by almost six years on average. Also, according to the WHO, the disparities in men and women’s survival rates “reflect several factors: greater levels of occupational exposure to physical and chemical hazards, behaviors associated with male norms of risk-taking and adventure, health behavior paradigms related to masculinity and the fact that men are less likely to visit a doctor when they are ill and, when they see a doctor, are less likely to report on the symptoms of disease or illness.”
The “male norms of risk-taking” in Saint Lucia were revealed as Bray spoke: “I began working at Planned Parenthood on a men’s health project with minibus taxi drivers. And it was rough! The men would put so much pressure on each other.” She explained that even for something as simple as a blood pressure check, men would bombard each other with reasons why they should not go to get it done.
“They must learn to encourage each other to do the right thing,” said Bray, and she did not mean only in the area of healthcare. From her experience, Bray has concluded that the illusion of having only two acceptable emotions—happiness and anger—is a general problem. “When I do sessions with men,” she said, “I always try and encourage them to be emotionally aware, to use words, say, like ‘I felt embarrassed. I felt hurt. I felt disappointed,’ instead of saying, ‘Gasa I was so vex. I was so angry.’ Sometimes anger is not what they want to cite, but they have learnt to use anger to cover a multiplicity of emotions.”
And then there’s the matter of the alarming alcohol consumption among males. The WHO bulletin notes that for many men excessive alcohol consumption is linked to notions of masculinity. For example, a study showed that heavy drinking “elevates or maintains a man’s status in working-class social groups by facilitating access to power associated with the hegemonic ideal of the real working man”.
Men have been cultured into these habits and according to Bray, the only way to break them is to introduce new formulas in child-rearing periods by teaching boys to visit their doctors and dentists, report symptoms and discuss the spectrum of emotions from early. A final statement from
Bray: “As women, we need our men to stand with us. Women
think they can do it all: ‘Women’s power, let’s ditch the men, let’s destroy the men.’ That’s not helping our boys, that’s not helping our family, that’s not helping our society. We need to work with our men, to build them up and to make sure they feel secure, not vulnerable.”
