Concepto de liderazgo

For a long time the category of gender was conceived as natural and biological justifying the continued subordination of women by men. Nobody bothered to question the unequal power relations and practices between men and women. Even today such natural notions of gender continue to circulate with a lot of force in some areas generating popular media support and coverage (Biddulphs, 1998; Pollack, 1998; Sommers, 2000). But there are contesting gender discourses as well. It was not until the rise women’s movements and feminism in the 1960s and 1970s that a focus on understanding men developed. Liberal and Radical western feminists identified the patriarchal structure as the basis of the oppression of women and depicted all men as beneficiaries of that system (Pascoe, 2007). From the beginning the study of masculinity did not emerge as a coherent field (Kimmel,

2010). Some studies about men, therefore, attempted to reject the essentialist presentation of men portrayed by feminists. These studies were a response in defense of existing gender arrangements which were oppressive to women. But there was also a growing recognition of the cost of some notions of being male, on men’s health and emotions (Connell, 2000).

Within these two broad positions, were a myriad of responses that research about men adopted. Messner (1997) has called these responses, “…the masculinity terrain”. In South Africa Morrell (2005) has replicated Messner’s typology in order to describe gender transformation in a post apartheid context. Contrary to the essentialized characterization of men presented by the liberal and radical feminists, a radical research program on understanding men and boys has drawn heavily on Connell’s (1995) concept of multiple masculinities. Connell’s framework of analyzing gender asserts that, in any given context there are relations between masculinities and femininities that change over time. In this regard Connell remains the architect of the concept of hegemonic masculinity which has informed and transformed most of the current understanding of gender in the family, workplace and community. These theoretical developments in understanding men also spurred research on the interplay of gender and schooling. Much of this research has produced complicated and nuanced understanding of boys’ experiences in education in the Global North with Australia, North America and United Kingdom taking a leading role. No corresponding research has emerged from the Global South. Because of its specific context of postcoloniality, punctured by the current moment of Global economic restructuring that has impacted the inhabitants in diverse ways, there is therefore a need

to conduct ‘local ethnographies’ (Connell, 1995) of masculinities even in schools. This Geo-political specificity opens up research opportunities within the Global South. There has been little analysis of men and masculinities in the Third world. Within the Global South and specific to the African context the study of masculinity is a fairly recent phenomenon. For a greater part, this work has been informed by a postcolonial discursive framework (Morrell and Swart, 2005). Mainly, the focus of this research has been on trying to depict a diverse identity and experiences of the African men countering an established monolithic Western colonizing anthropological presentation. In Orientalism, Said (1978) explains how Western literature has consistently conveyed the Third World as the `Other’ defined by ‘emaciated children, oppressed women and violent men engaged in heinous holocausts (Morrell and Swart, 2005). While at present scholarly Western literature has moved away from this binary and negative portrayal of the ‘Other’

Third World and working towards a more balanced appraisal, public Western Media still

continue to channel pathologizing images of the Third World men and boys. The impact of these media messages is profound given the global reach of modern technologies. My own personal memoir would suffice to exemplify this point.

“….you come from Zimbabwe in Africa, do you speak Swahili? Another flip to this question is, “….do you speak Afrikaans?” With all good intentions, most of my Western friends and even other Western strangers I happen to enter into conversation with would ask me that question. A question such as this overlooks the fact that there is linguistic diversity in Africa with an estimate of 1500-2000 African languages. Morrell and Ouzgane (2005) identify the point of departure for an African masculinity research agenda as starting from a position of diversity and acknowledging that not all residents of

Africa are black. Nor do they all speak Bantu languages. Some are Christians, Muslims Hindus, traditional believers, and non-believers. The variations are infinite (p. 7). In the same vein, Barker and Ricardo (2005) argue that, there is need to pay attention to the plurality of men and their diverse realities in Africa, “….the range of cultural and local contextual realities implies that generalizations about men and masculinities in Africa should be made with caution” (p. 3). From this premise significant research about men have been generated in South Africa showing how racial apartheid is important in understanding the construction of violent masculinities among black boys in schools (Morrell, 2007, Bhana, 2005). Some of this work also examines how masculinities are constructed through risk taking behavior among school boys in the wake of the HIV/AIDS scourge (Jeftha, 2006 and Fouten, 2006). In Lesotho Morojele (2011) has documented how rural school masculinities are constructed in the context of Basotho patriarchy and United Nations Millennium Development Goals of Free Primary Education. This research is beginning to illuminate the diversity in masculinity among African school boys.

Besides the research from South Africa, studies in many school settings in Africa have been dominated by representations that position girls as victims of harassment, violence and other forms of gender injustice. This leaves a research gap not only in our understanding of boys, but also a gap in terms of its capacity to inform our understanding of the intersectionality of masculinities and femininities in this particular context.

The findings from that kind of research and reports pertaining to Zimbabwe will be discussed in the later section of this chapter.