Gender and Development: Where are the Men?

This presentation will focus on men, masculinities and the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa. As the interest in gender and development in Africa increases among experts in the development field, men have been increasingly left out of the discourse. Given the severity of gender inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa, focus on women is necessary. However, due to the prevalence of issues such as violence and HIV/AIDS prevalence among men, masculinity as a social construct must be given appropriate attention. In 2000, The United Nation Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS launched a World AIDS Day campaign called “AIDS: Men Make a Difference”. A UNAIDS March 2000 report acknowledged the importance of working with men to halt the HIV/AIDS pandemic due to “cultural beliefs and expectations [which] heighten men’s vulnerability” to HIV/AIDS. Similarly, scholars have recently taken interest in the intersection between masculinity and HIV/AIDS. This presentation will provide an overview of the exclusion of men’s issues in development and the reasons why we need to start paying attention to masculinity as a gendered construct.