On the suspension bridge that crosses the Vilcanota River, in the village of Secsencalla, in the Andes highlands region of Cuzco, Peru, a group of men who have been taking steps towards a new form of masculinity without machismo pose for a photo. From left to right: Saul Huamán, Rolando Tito, Hilario Quispe and Brian Junior Quispe. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
CUZCO, Peru , Oct 6 2022 (IPS)

“My father was very ‘machista’, he used to beat my mother… It was a very sad life,” said Dionisio Ticuña, a resident of the rural community of Canincunca, on the outskirts of the town of Huaro, in the southern Peruvian highlands region of Cuzco more than 3,000 meters above sea level.

Today, at 66 years of age, he is happy that he managed to not copy the model of masculinity that his father showed him, in which being a man was demonstrated by exercising power and violence over women and children."I have been married to my wife Delia for 35 years, we have raised our children and I can say that you feel great peace when you learn to respect your partner and to show your innermost emotions.” -- Dionisio Ticuña

“Now I am an enemy of the ‘wife beaters’, I don’t hang out with the ones who were raised that way and I don’t pay attention to the taunts or ugly things they might say to me,” he said in an interview with IPS in his new adobe house, which he built in 2020 and where he lives with his wife and their youngest daughter, 20. Their three other children, two boys and a girl, have already become independent.

In this South American country of 33 million people, tolerance of violence, particularly gender-based violence, is high, and there is a strong division of roles within couples.

A nationwide survey on social relationships, conducted in 2019 by the governmental National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), showed that 52 percent of women believed they should first fulfill their role as mothers and wives before pursuing their dreams, 33 percent believed that if they were unfaithful they should be punished by their husband, and 27 percent said they deserved to be punished if they disrespected their husband.

The survey also found that a high proportion of Peruvians agreed with the physical punishment of children. Of those interviewed, 46 percent thought it was a parental right and 34 percent believed it helped discipline children so they would not become lazy.

Katherine Pozo, a Cuzco lawyer with the rural development program of the Flora Tristán Peruvian Women’s Center, told IPS that masculinity in Peru, particularly in rural areas, is still very machista or sexist.

“The ideas acquired in childhood and transmitted from generation to generation are that men have power over women, that women owe them obedience, and that women’s role is to take care of their men and take care of the home and the family. This thinking is an obstacle to the integral experience of their masculinities and to the recognition of women’s rights,” she said in an interview at her home in Cuzco, the regional capital.

Dionisio Ticuña, a resident of the rural community of Canincunca, in the Andean region of Cuzco in southern Peru, stands in front of his new adobe house, built in 2020. At the age of 66, he has achieved the tranquility of a life without machismo, which he experienced as a child in his family. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Based on that analysis the Center decided to involve men in the work they do in rural communities in Cuzco to help women exercise their rights and have greater autonomy in making decisions about their lives, promoting the approach to a new kind of masculinity among men.

In 2018 the Center launched this process, convinced that it was necessary to raise awareness among men about gender equality so that women’s efforts to break down discrimination could flourish. The project will continue until next year and is supported by two Spanish institutions: the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation and Muguen Gainetik.

IPS visited different Quechua indigenous villages in Cuzco´s Andes highlands to talk to farmers who are working to shed gender prejudices and beliefs that, they acknowledge, have brought them unhappiness. Now, they are gradually taking significant steps with the support of the Center, which is working to generate a new view of masculinity in these communities.

“I have been married to my wife Delia for 35 years, we have raised our children and I can say that you feel great peace when you learn to respect your partner and to show your innermost emotions,” said Ticuña, a participant in the initiative.

“Being head of household is hard, but it doesn’t give me the right to mistreat. I decided not to be like my father and to be a different kind of person in order to lead a happy life with her and our children,” he said, sitting at the entrance to his home in Canincunca.

Hilario Quispe, a farmer from the Secsencalla farming community in the town of Andahuaylillas, in the Peruvian highlands region of Cuzco, poses for a photo with his wife Hilaria Mena. For him it was a revelation to understand that the tasks she performs at home are work, and his commitment now is to share them. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Recognizing that women do work

Hilario Quispe, a 49-year-old farmer from the Secsencalla community in the town of Andahuaylillas, told IPS that in his area there is a great deal of machismo.

In his home, at 3100 meters above sea level, he said that he has been able to understand that women also work when they are at home.

“Actually, they do more than men, we have only one job, but they wash, cook, weave, take care of the children, look after the animals, go out to the fields…And I used to say: my wife doesn’t work,” he reflected.

Because of the distribution of tasks based on stereotyped gender roles, women spend more time than men on unremunerated care tasks in the household.

INEI reported in 2021 that in the different regions of the country, Peruvian women have a greater overall workload than men because the family responsibilities fall on their shoulders.

In rural areas, women work an average of 76 hours per week, 47 of which are in unpaid activities involving work in the home, both caring for their families and their crops.

In the case of men, their overall workload is 64 hours per week, most of which, 44 hours, are devoted to paid work.

Saúl Huamán is a family farmer in the rural community of Secsencalla. He recognizes that machismo is still a daily reality in Peru’s Andes highlands regions, but he strives to demonstrate day by day that he can be different and can achieve a life based on respect with his partner and their six-month-old son, Luas. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Breaking down stereotypes

Pozo, with the Flora Tristán Center, cited data from the official report that found that in the countryside, married women spend 17 hours a week in kitchen activities and men only four; in housekeeping seven and their partners three; and in childcare 11 and their husbands seven.

Quispe, who with his wife, Hilaria Mena, has four children between the ages of six and 17, said it was a revelation to understand that the different activities his wife performs at home are work.

“If she wasn’t there, everything would fall apart. But I am not going to wait for that to happen, I am committed to stop being machista. Those ideas that have been put in our minds as children do not help us have a good life,” he remarked.

The department of Cuzco is a Peruvian tourist area, where the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu is the main attraction. It has more than 1.3 million inhabitants, of which 40 percent live in rural areas where agriculture is one of the main activities. Much of it is subsistence farming, which requires the participation of the different members of the family.

This is precisely the case of the Secsencalla farming community, where, although the new generations have made it to higher education, they are still tied to the land.

Rolando Tito sits next to his mother Faustina Ocsa. He believes that men can experience their masculinity differently, without machismo or violence, with equal relationships with women. The university student is also actively involved in agricultural work in his rural village of Secsencalla, in the Andean region of Cuzco, in southern Peru. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Rolando Tito, 25, is in his third year of systems engineering at the National University of Cuzco, and helps his mother, Faustina Ocsa, 64, with the agricultural work.

“I want to better myself and continue helping my mother, she is a widow and although she was unable to study, she always encouraged me to do so. Times are no longer like hers when women didn’t have opportunities, but there are still men who think they should stay in the kitchen,” he told IPS, with his Quechua-speaking mother at his side.

Sitting by the entrance to the community’s bodega, which is often used as a center for meetings and gatherings, with the help of a translator, his mother recalled that she experienced a lot of violence, that fathers were not supportive of their daughters and that they mistreated their wives. And she said she hoped that her son would be a good man who would not follow in the footsteps of the men who came before him.

“I have learned about equality between men and women,” her son said. “For example, I am helping in the house, I am cooking and washing, that does not make me less of a man, and when I have a partner I will not have the idea that she has to serve me. Together we will work in the house and on the farm.”

Brian Junior Quispe, a 19-year-old from the community, who is about to begin studying veterinary medicine, said he now knows that “men should not take advantage of women, but rather support each other to get ahead together.”

The same sentiment was expressed by Saúl Huamán, 35, who has become a father for the first time with his baby Luas, six months old.

“Now I have to worry about three mouths to feed. I used to be a machine operator but now I only work in the fields and I have to work hard to make it profitable. With my wife Sonia we share the chores, while she cooks I watch the baby, and I am also learning to prepare meals,” he says as his smiling wife listens.

Pozo the attorney recognized that it is not easy to change cultural patterns so strongly rooted in the communities, but said that it is not impossible.

“It is like sowing the seed of equality, you have to water and nurture it, and then harvest the fruits, which is a better life for women and men,” she said.

Shammi Haque, a Dhaka blogger known as a courageous advocate for free expression and secularism, received death and rape threats. Credit: Center for Inquiry

By Manipadma Jena
NEW DELHI, May 1 2017 (IPS)

“It’s not what you say that prompts it—it’s the fact that you are saying it,” says Mary Beard, a Cambridge University classics professor about online trolling. “If you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It is the many ways that men have silenced outspoken women since the days of the ancients.”

Women professionals in many countries across Asia and the Pacific have increased their number in the newsrooms, according to a study, but they still represent only three out of ten news staff. Even with this low representation, they have now breezed into the male bastion of hard stories, among them politics, corruption, conflict, governance, environment with confidence and impact.“Shaming and harming women is an age-old practice, except that real time information sharing through technology makes the outreach far greater and the damage huge.” --Dilrukshi Handunnetti

They speak their mind, put forth their opinion and debate knowledgeably and vigorously with readers on matters of import on social media platforms.

Societal images of women have remained largely conservative.

Shammi Haque, a Dhaka blogger, received death and rape threats and an email from an Islamic extremist group that claimed the killing of  six Bangladeshi bloggers which said,  “Since the Islamic  Sharia (law) views working of women outside their homes without purdah (head cover) as (a) punishable offense, their employers are guilty to the same degree. We are urging the media to release their women from their jobs.”

In India, as part of an anti-trolling campaign by national daily Hindustan Times, Harry Stevens and Piyush Aggarwal set out in April to demonstrate how hard it is to be an outspoken woman on Twitter. They gathered a week’s worth of tweets sent to four prominent Indian women journalists. Out of these Barkha Dutt, a television veteran, received 3,020 abusive tweets, and Rana Ayyub, a Muslim, received 2,580 hateful tweets, often coloured by Islamophobia.

Internet trolls have had a free run in the region for at least six years now. Women journalists who tackled trolling and abusive comments on social media by ignoring or blocking the persistent trolls, now find that stalking and direct threats of attack have increased, forcing them to seek legal recourse or police protection.

“Journalists’ safety is a precondition for free speech and free media,” says the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

“Online media today allows for the fast flow of information and the public’s active par­ticipation in sharing ideas, news and insight. An open, free and safe Internet is essential for public debate and free flow of information and therefore should be duly protected.”

Female journalists, bloggers and other media actors are disproportionally experi­encing gender related threats, harassment and intimidation on the Internet, which has a direct impact on their safety and future online activities.

Twitter threats like “I’m going to cut off your head and rape it” have been directed even at the sexagenarian Mary Beard.

About the vitriolic abuse she faces, Dutt asks, “Why isn’t anyone discussing the marriages, divorces, and affairs of my male colleagues? Why the fixation with my private life? Because the public scrutiny of women – and especially those of us who are proudly ambitious and fiercely independent – is very different from the standards used to measure men. And the subtext is always sexual.”

“Cyber bullies are the same as goons who threaten in real life,” psychiatrist Samir Parikh says.

The personalized online abuse women journalists get for doing only what is expected by their professional job “can make them feel traumatized, helpless, angry and very frustrated,” says Parikh. “In some, it can even cause self-esteem issues, affect social life and lead to symptoms of depression, anxiety and panic attacks. For women, the abuse and threats of violence are often openly sexist and sexual, which makes them tougher to deal with.”

“(Online) it is possible to cloak one’s identity and attack individuals in the most unethical and harmful manner,” says Dilrukshi Handunnetti, an editor in Colombo. “Shaming and harming women is an age-old practice, except that real time information sharing through technology makes the outreach far greater and the damage huge.”

It does little to ease the trauma for journalists to know that trolling correlates with psychopathy, sadism, and Machiavellianism, according to a 2014 empirical personality study. Other studies found boredom, attention seeking, revenge, pleasure, and a desire to cause damage to the community among motivations for trolling.

But some interviewed trolls viewed their online comments not as harassment, but as a needed counterweight to opinions and news items they believe are flawed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

As threats get too dangerous to ignore, women journalists are being forced to seek recourse from the law, despite their misgivings about how the law is framed and doubts about whether law-enforcing agencies can ensure speedy and sensitive investigation.

An Online Harassment Social Media Policy drafted March 2016 by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) lays out a road map for media houses to protect journalistic voices, create safe online spaces for open and respectful debate, and deal with abuse and harassment faced in particular by female staff.

Among the mechanisms to ensure digital safety and freedom from harassment, the road map calls for a special cyber cell in media organizations that equip women journalists particularly, with legal awareness and resources. When the harassment is extreme, measures must also include physical security, legal hand-holding, and support to pursue police complaints and psychological support and trauma counseling.

Meanwhile, a Byte Back handbook for women journalists being cyber-bullied gives out handy advice – ignore, filter, block, report and if it gets worse, name-and-shame, shout it out, and don’t forget to save and document abuse.

Burqas fail to shield many Afghan women from daily harassment, both in the street and at the workplace. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
KABUL, May 17 2013 (IPS)

While global attention is fixed on the scheduled pullout of U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan in 2014, women here have a much more immediate concern: how will they survive another day at work?

Having a job is now considered a routine aspect in the lives of many women around the world, but here, female employees are forced to navigate entrenched sexist and patriarchal attitudes, dodge sexual advances, and live with memories of harassment, abuse and even rape.

Last month, the international watchdog Human Rights Watch drew attention to the plight of Afghan policewomen who were being raped and harassed on the job due largely to a lack of gender-segregated bathroom facilities.

A flurry of press coverage ensued, drawing the ire of the Interior Ministry, which grudgingly promised to take action but has yet to implement any concrete safety measures or bring the perpetrators to justice.

In the face of apparent indifference on the part of many officials to a growing trend of sexual abuse in the workplace, one branch of the government has stepped up, drafting a set of anti-harassment guidelines that, if enforced, all employees will be required to abide by.

Spearheaded by 26-year-old Matin Bek, deputy director of Afghanistan’s Independent Directorate for Local Governance (IDLG) and the youngest deputy minister in the country, the draft regulations acknowledge that workplace safety is a fundamental right and provide women with mechanisms to seek redress should this right be violated.

The son of a mujahedeen leader credited with fighting to keep girls’ schools open in his northern Takhar province during years of civil strife from the late 1970s until the end of the Taliban era in 2001, Bek is well aware of the challenges that lie ahead.

In a country where most women languishing in prison are there for committing so-called “moral crimes” – such as having been raped, leaving abusive marriages or choosing their own partners  – he recognises that attempts to improve workplace safety may be perceived by some as “quixotic.”

But, as Bek tells IPS, he grew up in an “entirely different environment” to the urban patriarchal landscape. Since his father’s untimely death in a bomb blast in late 2011 he has been helping to dismantle the patronage networks that have traditionally been responsible for appointing district governors.

The IDLG now promotes a professional, merit-based body of civil servants accountable to the constitution.

This year, his ministry chose the date of Mar. 13, in honour of International Women’s Day on Mar. 8, to institute the anti-harassment guidelines as a national commitment to stop “treating women as commodities,” Bek said.

The guidelines define harassment as either verbal or physical intimidation, including unnecessary physical contact or drawing attention to an employee’s “sex appeal’’. Employers are obliged to follow up on complaints made via email or telephone and take disciplinary action against the perpetrators.

Economic benefits of workplace safety

The threat of rape, harassment and the “loss of honour” are thought to play a bigger role in keeping Afghan women at home than religious motivations.

Sexual harassment is pervasive in the country’s larger cities, like the capital Kabul, the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif and the western city of Herat. One NGO worker who did not wish to be named told IPS the harassment she faced in the capital was so extreme that she left the country in search of work elsewhere.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said.

A large part of the female workforce is employed in the government sector, but even here women are far outnumbered by their male counterparts: last year the Reuters news service reported that out of a total of 363,000 state employees, only 74,000 were women.

According to a report by the World Bank, the labour participation rate of women over the age of 15 years was 14.4 percent in 2012, compared to 80 percent for men.

Increasingly, even this small portion of women who are able to secure jobs are being forced by their male relatives to stay home, or are doing so out of fear of being attacked on the job.

This trend, according to Bek, is a dangerous one, as a result of which entire communities suffer significant economic losses: in a country where per capita GDP is about 1,000 dollars, a woman’s salary can mean the difference between healthy and malnourished children, or between sending youth to school versus forcing them into child employment.

Thus the new anti-harassment regulations, implemented in hundreds of local government offices under the IDLG’s beat, aim not only to raise respect for individual rights within Afghan society but also to foster economic growth, Bek said.

Various studies show that women’s participation in the workforce and in leadership positions play a vital role in economic and overall development.

One such report claims that if female employment rates were to match male rates, Japan could see a rise in GDP of nine percent, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of 12 percent and Egypt of 34 percent.

If women were allowed to concentrate on their jobs instead of looking for ways to avoid harassment, molestation and violence, their potential to the Afghan economy could be “vast,” Bek noted, adding that women’s participation in economic activities could also contribute to overall stability in the region, as fears of “chaos” and even civil war proliferate ahead of the 2014 departure of Western troops.

Entrenched sexism

Despite ample evidence on the need for such guidelines, enforcing them will not be easy. Reports of misconduct by public officials often meet with accusations that such claims by women or their advocates “insult the honour’’ of the alleged perpetrators or the public institutions to which they belong.

For example, the Apr. 25 HRW report on the need for safe bathroom facilities for Afghan policewomen provoked the wrath of the Interior Ministry, which demanded the rights group “apologise” for its findings.

HRW Afghanistan Researcher Heather Barr told IPS that the ministry “seems determined to claim that there have never been any cases of sexual harassment, sexual assault or rape of female police officers by male police officers.”

The government of President Hamid Karzai had set itself the goal of recruiting 5,000 women into the Afghan National Police (ANP) before 2014 to boost the miserable one percent female participation rate that currently exists.

Barr says this move is crucial, since most Afghan women are too frightened to report rape to male officers and cannot be searched by them. But, she said, the Interior Ministry’s attitude towards reports of rape and harassment could “harm efforts to recruit female police.”

The influence of journalists and film directors who are sensitive to the issue of gender equality is becoming visible in the Cuban media, where intellectuals and activists are demanding more action to break with sexism.

“Some progress can be seen,” journalist Dainerys Machado told IPS, saying she saw the most positive signs in alternative and online publications and in “fictional” programmes produced on the island. In the press, she said, “major changes have been seen only in certain media outlets.”

For example, the soap opera “Bajo el mismo sol” (“Under the same sun”), which recently ended after three seasons, addressed the theme of sexist violence against women. Its main characters were female ex-convicts who were trying to re-join society, and the series included different viewpoints about machismo and sexism, which sparked lively debate among viewers at home.

“While there have been omissions, the thematic shift in fictional audiovisual programmes in recent years has contributed to making diversity more visible, much more so than in the case of news programmes or newspapers,” said Machado, who works for the Cuban magazine Bohemia.

Cuba’s government-controlled media comprises 97 radio stations, 20 newspapers, two news agencies, magazines, websites, a national television network and 31 local television stations. The majority of professionals who work at these media still do not understand “the need to modify sexist language and other forms of exclusion,” Machado said.

However, these concerns were on the political agenda in late 2011, when the Cuban parliament discussed the way women are shown in music videos. They were also included in the policy document of the First National Conference of the Communist Party of Cuba, the only legal political party.

The party meeting, held in January 2012, set goals that included “reflecting, through the audiovisual media and the print and online press, Cuba’s reality in all of its diversity, including aspects of the economic, labour and social situations, and gender, skin colour, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and geographic origins.”

Since the 1960s, the issues of discrimination against women and the promotion of gender equality have been gradually taken up by academia, and are studied in field like journalism and communication. However, little research has been carried out on them, and few courses have adopted a gender perspective.

Since that time, media workers have embraced these issues, and now, years later, they have also started to adopt inclusive language, to make a shift from traditional sexist reporting and messages, that persist despite the efforts of the government and civil society.

On television, for example, programmes focusing on sexuality, women’s rights and responsible fatherhood are frequently broadcast.

However, Professor Gustavo Arcos said that communicators “need to open up to new currents of ideas, become more integrated into the world and shed the sexual, moral and cultural backwardness that has accompanied them for decades.”

Arcos, who is also an art critic, told IPS that “it has never been an easy task to introduce this new way of looking at things, because it generally breaks with routine, stirs up awareness and is uncomfortable for anybody, men or women, who use the media as an extension of their political or personal discourse.”

Iberian-American Women and Communication Conference has been meeting in Havana since 1992 to promote the inclusion of issues involving women and sexual diversity. The tenth edition was held May 23-25, with participants including journalists and media executives.

Sponsored by three nongovernmental groups — the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC), Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) and Cuban Association of Social Communicators (ACCS) — the conference discussed issues such as how the Cuban media addresses questions like gender-based violence, sexual orientation and women’s traditional roles in the private sphere.

Thanks to the work accomplished by initiatives like this conference, critical media products are appearing, along with areas hidden by so-called androcentrism. According to Lirians Gordillo, “the current situation is a complex one, because non-sexist programmes and products are beginning to appear and to coexist with an immense amount of sexist messages.”

Gordillo,  one of the organisers of “Mirar desde la sospecha” (roughly “With a Sceptical View”) a monthly debate on gender and culture, told IPS that a “lack of guidance” and “an absence of discussion within the media on these issues” are two negative factors.

“Mirar desde la sospecha” is promoted by the Gender and Culture Programme of the Oscar Arnulfo Romero Centre for Reflection and Debate, a Christian organisation, and the nongovernmental Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.

The monthly debate addresses ideas about the need for developing strategies for equality among men and women, especially in the sphere of culture.

The debate is one of a number of Cuban projects that aim to foment a gender perspective in the media. Others include the Iberian-American Masculinity Network, Todas Contracorriente and the “I Say No to Violence against Women” campaign.

According to experts, the news policies and social mission of the media need to be revised, other perspectives should be included in academic training, inclusive public policies need to be implemented and studies about different publics should be encouraged.

“There are increasingly more women in the mass media — and also some men — who have been approaching the issue based on their individual interests,” said Isabel Moya, one of Cuba’s leading experts on gender and communication.

Moya, who is the coordinator of a training course on gender for media professionals from Cuba and other countries, said that “male and female communicators cannot be trained today if we don’t start with a process of raising awareness about gender.” That “is our main objective and our main challenge,” she told IPS.