Project Aims To Get Brazilian Men Into Childcare

A project that aims to promote gender equality and women protection has pushed for the involvement of Brazilian men in childcare to change their attitudes and make them better fathers. The ultimate goal of the program, however, is to engage Brazilian men in unpaid work like taking care of children, which is an important part of the campaign to end violence against women and promote gender equality.

"To us, it seemed obvious that we needed to figure out more constructive ways to engage men on this topic," said Promundo CEO and founder Gary Barker. While women who are financially better off have lesser chances of being in a violent relationship in the long term, there is a chance that men may not be ready for that and may feel disempowered economically.

"[Her partner] may be feeling economically disempowered, the power dynamic feels like it's shifting ... and in some settings and some relationships, men might not be ready for that," Barker added.

Promundo addresses this problem by implementing in Brazil a project that trains government staff who administer the government's cash transfer program called bolsa familia. Under the companion project, the staff is trained on gender equality and shared care work strategies which they impart to the families especially to the men when administering the cash transfer program.

The Guardian said around 93 percent of the beneficiaries of balsa familia are women. After encouraging the fathers to help the children with homework and to meet with school teachers, a hundred percent of the participants acknowledged that childcare was included in their responsibilities as opposed to only 75 percent before the implementation.

HNV News said Promundo was also responsible for the successful campaign to entitle men to an increased paid paternity leave from only five days to 20 days. Promundo gets financial support from the World Bank, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other government sources.

Brazil is one of the few countries in the global south to afford fathers to take a paid paternity leave. It is hoped that this will reduce the gap in the caregiving time between men and women as well as reduce the rate of gender-based violence.

The State of the World's Fathers report from Promundo Global in 2015 shows the men spend only 10 hours and eight minutes in domestic work and care as opposed to the 22 hours a spent by women every week. While the results look promising, Barker admits there is a need to scale up the engagement of men from the households to the community level to make this more mainstream.