Good fellows: Men’s role & reason in the fight for gender equality

Abstract

This essay attempts to make the case for including–even embracing–men in the fight for gender equality. I do not mean to argue that men should supplant women in this struggle, or that enlisting men implies dismissing or diminishing women. My aim instead is to make this fight less isolated and more practical, and to attack the so-called women’s problem with a broader, blunter tool. If men believe in equality, then expanding that belief to explicitly include women is not a leap of logic or act of charity. It is instead a basic extension of a truth already deemed self-evident, and a channel through which men can begin to redefine their own identities and interests. Men have been an obstacle to women’s equality for a very long time. Perhaps the moment has come to make them part of the solution as well.