From Boys to Men: The Role of Education in Shaping Positive Adolescent Masculinities in East and Southern Africa Region

This chapter advocates for a stronger role for schools in deconstructing harmful masculinities. There is overwhelming evidence that education is one of the most powerful drivers of gender equality because it can empower individuals and enable them to challenge discriminatory gender norms and the informal, often implicit rules of masculinity and femininity, which people mostly a bide by. This would offer an opportunity for young men and boys to begin to reconstruct a more positive model of masculinity that accommodates the many different ways to be a boy and allows all individuals to feel secure in their masculine identity. The chapter proposes the use of the Social Ecological Model to both examine risk factors for negative masculinities and develop adequate strategies to promote positive adolescent masculinities.