Neue EU-Studie verspricht Morgendämmerung für die Emanzipation der Männer in Europa

Das Wissenschaftsmagazin Science Daily berichtet:

A fumbling men's movement is dawning in Europe, there is a widespread concern about boys' academic performance in school, and child custody and breakups are controversial issues.

"It was surprising to see that the discussion concerning boys' role as academic losers in school was found in all the countries covered by this study," says Elli Scambor who is one of the near forty scholars who have participated in the EU report The role of men in gender equality.

"And the school as a feminized institution was identified as the main problem."

Although research shows that more boys than girls drop out of school and that their academic performance is slightly poorer than the girls', it also shows that class and migration background is as important as gender when one tries to explain these differences.

The report was assigned by the European Commission, and it forms the basis for a number of policy recommendations. The study has collected and compared statistics, research and the political development concerning men and equality in 27 EU countries and the four EFTA countries -- among them Norway.

"Homophobia, child custody and violence were all controversial themes. It was much easier to talk about work, health and active fathers," says Scambor.

"The EU commissioners come from a long tradition in which equality work during the last decades have first and foremost been focusing on women. They had to get used to the idea that men is also a gender."

For instance, the commissioners had to be reminded by the researchers of the fact that violence does not only mean men's violence against women, but also violence executed between and against men. And the fact that one cannot carry out research on masculinity without addressing homophobia.

"Some controversial themes were not fully addressed," says Øystein Gullvåg Holter, who is responsible for the Norwegian contribution to the report. He would like to see more research on child custody following breakups, among other things.

However, this is the first time that men's situation has been summarized on such a wide basis, especially in terms of work, family, care and health. The fact that this has been put on the agenda in Europe is both new and important.

(...) However, the researchers found signs of dawning male movements in all the 31 countries which have been examined; England and Sweden are in the lead, each having 24 male organizations.

"Many of them focus on child custody after breakups, on boys as losers in the education system and on the influence of feminism on men," says Scambor.

(...) The researchers have applied the American sociologist Michael Alan Messner's triangle model as their theoretical approach for evaluating male policy. According to Messner, a male organization has to cover all three angles in the triangle in order to be progressive: variations between men, men's privileges, and men's disadvantages.

Hier findet man den vollständigen Artikel. Er enthält noch einige leichte Attacken gegen "Antifeministen", Europas Gender-Szene ist also nicht urplötzlich von feminismuskritischen Männerrechtlern übernommen worden. Aber die Rosenbrock-Gesterkamp-Doktrin, der zufolge Menschen, die über die Benachteiligungen von Männern sprechen, eine "Opferideologie" wie Rechtsextremisten pflegten und deshalb sozial isoliert werden sollten, hat offenbar auch keine große Zukunft.