DSW’s Women Deliver Daily Diary – Day 4: boys don’t cry

This is the latest in a series of blog posts, following DSW’s participation at the fourth Women Deliver conference in Copenhagen. Read the first entries here.

Wow. It is easy to be glib or trite about the things being discussed at Women Deliver, and the people discussing them. God knows, I am as guilty of it as anyone. But after the closing plenary session that just ended there is not much you can say other than just that.

Wow. Not much of a “hot take”, but still. Kate Gilmore’s comedy and vocal chops! Yvonne Chaka Chaka. The words of Katja Iversen and Women Deliver’s departing President and founder Jill Sheffield’s closing words. Yvonne Chaka Chaka singing out the conference with M People! The testimonies and exhortations for gender equality and for the sexual and reproductive health and rights of all women and girls resonated with the crowd, and certainly with me. Hats off to Women Deliver and everyone at the organisation.

Boys don’t cry

It was a fantastic way to end a greta week in Copenhagen, and I walked out of the plenary hall with shivers down my spine. I will even admit, dear reader, that it brought a brief tear to my eye more than once. As Babatunde said in the very first session all the way back on Monday (feels like a lot longer that just four days), it is okay for boys to cry every now and then.

Most of my last day at Women Deliver was largely spent coming to terms with my race and my maleness. The potential for men and boys to actively work with and to support women in delivering gender equality has been a constant theme throughout the week’s debates. How can we work with young men and boys so that they can support and encourage – or at least get out of the way – of their sisters and female friends in accessing and achieving their rights? Personally, I am not sure if I have ever been more acutely aware of my maleness, and of the privilege that my gender and the fact of being white confers upon me.

White men of the world, your time is up

The sheer scale of the diversity of voices – of women and men from all over the world – at Women Deliver made on thing abundantly clear to me: the end of the pre-eminence of the northern, middle-aged white man is close. There is a generation of shockingly talented and assertive young people from the global south who are poised to take hold of the global debate on development and gender equality. But why should it be shocking?

I will admit that their drive and determination to make a positive change in their communities and their countries for girls made me feel inadequate about my own actions. Willie J. Parker, a speaker on one of the final panels this morning and one of the few remaining doctors providing reproductive health and abortion services in Mississippi, clarified this for me when he said that it was good but not sufficient to be neutral towards patriarchy if you want to see change; for true change you need to be actively anti-patriarchal social structures, fighting for gender equality not just in your own home but in your community and the wider world. Words to take away from Copenhagen and think about how to make reality.

Would you take a male pill?

The early afternoon had started off on a lighter note, with a discussion hosted by the Population Council about the prospects for new female and male contraception. The lively discussion quickly moved on to discuss the asymmetry of responsibility for contraception between men and women, given that women have long had to regulate their fertility and contraception, while men have generally gotten off lightly when it comes to being responsible for protection in a relationship or other sexual encounters.

Prospects for male hormonal contraception were debated (the consensus was we should not expect it any time soon) and whether men would take it (and women trust them to). Someone even suggested that male hormonal contraception would be a blockbuster if you could pair it with something like Viagra (other arousal medication is available). Again, this comes back to fundamental questions of masculinity, how society and the medical community deals with female fertility and reproductive health, as well as the relative dearth of contraceptive options out there for men – basically condoms and vasectomies. Would men even take a pill if it were offered to them? We didn’t manage to answer that hypothetical.

Promoting SRHR and family planning in Kenya

In amongst all this deep and difficult introspection, I managed to talk one last time to one of the Women Deliver Young Leaders! Catherine Nyambura is a youth activist working with Dandelion Kenya, and is passionate about advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights, adolescent and youth health. In our chat, I asked her how she came to be a Young leader, what she has made of the experience, and she even had a few nice words to say about DSW Kenya! Have a listen:

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And, I finally fulfilled my wish. Here’s me looking like an idiot with a VR headset on (the hair!). Thanks to UNFPA for letting me try it out, and gives as much of a visceral experience of a refugee camp as virtual reality can.