The International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) is a comprehensive household questionnaire on men’s attitudes and practices – along with women’s opinions and reports of men’s practices – on a wide variety of topics related to gender equality. From 2009 to 2010, household surveys were administered to more than 8,000 men and 3,500 women ages 18-59 in Brazil, Chile, Croatia, India, Mexico and Rwanda.
Topics in the questionnaire included: gender-based violence; health and health-related practices; household division of labour; men’s participation in caregiving and as fathers; men’s and women’s attitudes about gender and gender-related policies; transactional sex; men’s reports of criminal behaviour; and quality of life. This report focuses on the initial, comparative analysis of results from the men’s questionnaires across the six countries, with women’s reports on key variables.
Overall, IMAGES results affirm that gender equality should be promoted as a gain for women and men. Change seems to be happening as younger men and men with higher levels of education show more gender-equitable attitudes and practices. Men who report more gender-equitable attitudes are more likely to be happy, to talk to their partners and to have better sex lives. Women who report that their partners participate in daily care work report higher levels of relationship and sexual satisfaction. Findings suggest that most men in most of the survey sites accept gender equality in the abstract even if they are not yet living it in their daily practices.
Key Findings:
- Work-related stress is commonplace in all survey sites. Between 34% and 88% of men in the survey sites reported feeling stress or depression because of not having enough income or enough work. Men who experienced work-related stress were more likely to report depression, suicide ideation, previous arrests, and use of violence against intimate partners.
- Men showed tremendous variation in their gender-related attitudes, with India and Rwanda showing the most inequitable attitudes.
- Younger men, men with more education and men who saw their fathers do domestic work are more likely to carry out domestic duties. Close to half of men with children say they are involved in some daily caregiving.
- Men report higher levels of sexual and relationship satisfaction than women. Women who say their partners do more domestic work are more sexually satisfied.
- Men’s rates of regular abuse of alcohol – defined as having five or more drinks in one night on a once monthly or greater basis – vary from 23% in India to 69% in Brazil and are significantly higher than women’s reported alcohol abuse in all survey sites. In most sites, younger men and men with more inequitable gender attitudes are more likely to regularly abuse alcohol.
- Men report high self-esteem, with the exceptions of Croatia and India; at the same time, men show relatively high levels of depression and suicide ideation.
- Men reported lifetime rates of physical intimate partner violence ranging from 25-40% with women reporting slightly higher rates. Factors associated with men’s use of violence were rigid gender attitudes, work stress, experiences of violence in childhood and alcohol use. Men’s reports of perpetration of sexual violence against women and girls ranged from 6-29%; in India and Mexico, the majority of sexual violence took place against a current or former partner.
- Relatively high percentages of men reported ever having participated in criminal or delinquent acts; between 6% and 29% of men report ever having been arrested. In terms of factors associated with men’s participation in criminal activity, men’s socio-economic situation was the most significant. Men who owned firearms or carried out other violence or criminal behaviour were also more likely to report having used intimate partner violence.
- Men in all the countries, with the exception of India, are generally supportive of gender equality, with 87-90% saying that “men do not lose out when women’s rights are promoted.” Even when asked about specific policies – quotas for women in executive positions, in university enrolment or in government – men’s support for such policies is reasonably high, with 40-74% of men supporting such quotas. Among themes related to gender equality, men reported the highest exposure to campaigns about gender-based violence. At the same time, across the sites, men showed negative attitudes toward laws related to gender-based violence.
