Henry Murrain is leading Bogota’s first anti-machismo program.
At a university in the Colombian capital Bogota, groups of young men are crowded around tables learning something they’ve never done before.
The classes challenge the traditional gender roles by teaching men domestic and childcare tasks that are generally viewed as women's work.According to him, the classes are a rare chance for men to try tasks usually labelled as women’s work. The aim is to destigmatise caring duties, such as nappy changing, ironing, cooking and even combing hair.For him, cooking the family meal, for example, is a moment of connection with his children, an act of care largely ignored by men in Colombia.
In Colombia, a woman is sexually assaulted every 30 minutes. Every 15 hours, one woman is killed. Over the last two years, incidents have soared. Eight women were murdered on Mother’s Day this year. Three were confirmed femicides, a hate crime where a woman is intentionally murdered because she is female.
Thirteen years ago, he spent time in the town of Barrancabermeja, in the north of the country, interviewing prison inmates who had killed their wives. As a result, he says, men don’t learn how to manage or express their emotions in a healthy way and resort to violence. A helpline for men called Linea Calma provides free counselling to men going through a personal crisis or dealing with negative emotions.“The Latin macho has inside a tormented child of insecurity that lives with pretty much the idea that his partner prefers another. This is like a terrifying fantasy,” he says.
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