Reframing Masculinities: Narrating the Supportive Practices of Men

There is a growing concern among gender practitioners, activists and researchers to address the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality and in empowering women.  How can we make gendered partnerships possible? Do ordinary men in contemporary South Asia reflect on gender? What do they make of the public debates and outcries against issues like gender violence, female foeticide and the trafficking of women and children? The essays in this volume focus on the biographies and narratives of individual men who have self-consciously chosen to work on gender issues within and beyond everyday cultures of masculinity.  These biographies and stories of men need a public forum of expression because they have a direct.  They also have the power to produce an active rethinking about gender in contemporary Indian society.  It is important for men to known that there are others out there who are doing “gender” work.  It is equally important for women to know that there are men who actively counter violence against women in their everyday lives.  They enable us to hear an aspect of men’s lives and their subjective positions in ways that have not hitherto been addressed.  The stories of their lives can serve as blueprints for new social formations and as a way of understanding larger social realities from the standpoint of ordinary lives.