Maskulinities
About the Maskulinities project
Our Maskulinities workshop assists all men to:
- support each other and develop the knowledge and skills they need to champion change in their communities,
- reflect on commonly accepted aspects of masculinity, and recognise how short-sighted understandings of masculinity are major contributors to issues of gender-based violence (GBV), sexism, and LGBTphobia
"The workshops made me realise that masculinity has an influence on much more than I appreciated." - 2023 Participant.
Students of all genders are also invited to explore our other current opportunities via We Act.
Register your interest in attending a workshop in Term 3
All male students involved in a sports club at Warwick are invited to register to attend a workshop in Term 3. There are two dates available (you only need to attend one of the dates). Choose from:
- Date 1: Thursday 23rd May, 1-4pm, in R3.41.
- Date 2: Thursday 6th June, 1-4pm in R1.04.
Key information for workshop participants:
- Workshops are open to all men.
- Groups will be small to allow for contributing and listening.
- There will male identifying and/or non-binary facilitators working in teams of 2.
- There may be a peer facilitator in each group (a current student at Warwick who is male). Peer facilitators will be trained and will maintain confidentiality.
- The workshops are interactive, in-person, and will take place on central campus.
- You are eligible for 1 core skills point for the Warwick Award.
History of the series
- Our pilot phase report discusses the methodology and findings from the early co-creation stages of the project.
- We were invited to presentLink opens in a new window at the Warwick Inclusion Conference 2022.
Project team
Maskulinities is a collaboration between Community Values Education, Report and Support and Warwick Students' Union (SU).
Our student community will be involved, first-hand, in the design and delivery of the project, under the supervision of the Project Team. Co-creation remains at the heart of the project and we will be training a team of student Peer Facilitators shortly.
Other key links
More background to the project
Starting in Term 1 of the 2023/24 academic year, we will be scaling up the workshop series to include more participants. In 2022/23, we developed the workshop content with staff and student contributors, trained the facilitators, and tested the 3-part workshop series with a smaller cohort of participants (twenty-four men from eighteen sports clubs). We received positive feedback from participants.
In using the term 'all men' our intentions are to provide more explicit reassurance that the workshops are open to anyone who identifies as a man, including trans men. While we recognise that the term 'men' includes trans men, it is unfortunately the case that many opportunities advertised for men are not inclusive of trans men.
Male students can be less likely to engage with activities and resources which focus on the prevention of harmful behaviours such as sexism. With the Maskulinities project, we aimed to explore the reasons why, while encouraging increased responsibility and more engagement with activities going forward. During consultation, many female sports club members felt men within the community should actively help to overcome sexism through personal and cultural change.
Research indicates that men’s groups can have a significant positive impact on male conduct and men’s well-being and while sports teams can be vectors of problematic male norms and harmful social norms, they are also some of the most responsive student communities and sportspeople are often seen as student leaders at Warwick. A set of co-creation workshops, with 56 male students, found that participants were grateful for the opportunity for open discussion, and to unpick their role as potential active agents in cultural change. Male students valued support to reflexively engage with their role and conduct as men in relation to issues of sexism, gender-based violence and homophobia.