Violence against women: Men and the social imaginary

Diane Almeras looks at how individual shifts in attitude and behaviour by men to end discrimination and violence against women (VAW) need to be instituted for creative collective change. Even if individual men form equitable relationships with women, social change needs a deeply rooted challenge to gender biases in public discourse and practices. Almeras uses Castoriadis’ concepts of radical imagination and the social imaginary in order to explore how to build new forms of masculinities that are not based on the domination of women. © 2001 The Society for International Development.