crystalsmith

Violence against women (VAW) is largely deemed a women’s issue to be tackled by women and for women. However, VAW has a negative impact on entire communities and societies and is therefore impossible to eradicate without having men and boys on board efforts to do so. 

For this year’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence campaign, we present our fifth edition of “16 Male Role Models Helping to Stop Violence Against Women” featuring a diverse list of men who are doing their bit to create a more gender-equal world.

The men in this list believe that ending VAW is a fight and issue that should involve everyone and not just women. Many of these men are activists who have recognised that toxic masculinity and patriarchy are harmful to young boys and men. Some of them work directly with boys and men to empower them to prevent VAW from the roots. Others are high-profile men who use their celebrity platform to raise awareness about sexism, misogyny, toxic masculinity, women’s rights, and VAW.

The list also looks at men who have spoken up against VAW through various mediums like the media, demonstrations, and music, using their voice to show their solidarity and bring issues of gender-based violence to the forefront. 

In this post-Weinstein world where so many prominent men have been revealed as domestic abusers and sexual predators, we hope our fifth edition of 16 male role models against violence against women will provide living examples of positive masculinity that inspire and galvanise men and boys worldwide to become a part of the solution.

It’s time to stop violence against women. Together.

Note: Information for all role model profiles is sourced via online research and is based on one or more news sources, articles and/or The Pixel Project’s own interviews with them. The main articles/reports from which these profiles have been sourced can be directly accessed via the hyperlinked titles. Please do click through to learn more about these remarkable men.

Introduction by Regina Yau. Written, researched, and compiled by Anushia Kandasivam. Additional content by Regina Yau. Additional research by Regina Yau and Bernardo Rosa Rodrigues.

Inspired to support The Pixel Project’s anti-violence against women work? Make a donation to us today OR buy a copy of our 1st poetry collection, UNDER HER EYE. All donations and net proceeds from book sales go towards supporting our campaigns, programmes, and initiatives.  

Male Role Model #1: Adilur Rahman Khan – Bangladesh

Adilur Rahman Khan is a human rights lawyer and lead of Bangladesh-based human rights organisation Odhikar that monitors, researches and reports on various human rights violations in the country, including violence against women, child marriage and sexual violence. amongst others. Through Odhikar, Khan works closely with Girls Not Brides to end child marriage in Bangladesh. As a prominent lawyer, Khan has also worked on: high profile freedom of speech cases involving human rights defenders, whistleblowers, and journalists exposing human rights abuses to the public; brought cases against the authorities for corruption and torture; and defended fellow activists and represented families of victims of enforced disappearances. He himself has been detained multiple times in the course of his activism and daily work, triggering international calls for his release.

 

Male Role Model #2: Bad Bunny – Puerto Rico

Puerto Rican rapper, singer and record producer Bad Bunny (Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is one of the biggest Latin music artists in the world and known as the “King of Latin Trap”. He has consistently called out machismo, misogyny and sexual harassment, calling for fans to come together to “[s]top sexist violence, stop violence against women. Let’s educate right now, in the present, to have a better future”. Daring to redefine the traditional machismo of his culture, he has shown open support of the gay and drag community and released feminist songs such as “Yo Perreo Sola” (“I Twerk Alone”) about women who want to dance alone at the club, unbothered by men (appearing in drag in the music video), and “Andrea”, inspired by a real-life Puerto Rican femicide case where a woman was killed by her ex-boyfriend. 

 

Male Role Model #3: Benedict Cumberbatch – United Kingdom

British actor Benedict Cumberbatch has for years been a vocal proponent for equal pay for equal work, believing that “[e]qual pay and a place at the table are the central tenets of feminism” and urging the film industry to reject projects in which female actors are paid less than their male counterparts. He himself has taken a strong stand on the subject and refuses projects if his female co-stars will not receive equal pay. Cumberbatch uses his huge platform as a world-famous actor to speak frankly about gender equality and his sizable influence as a producer and investment draw to promote the same agenda and “use that attention for a raft of female projects”.

 

Male Role Model #4:  Ben Hurst – United Kingdom

Ben Hurst is an actor, educator and activist and the Head of Facilitations and Training at Beyond Equality, a UK-based organisation that engages men and boys in gender equality conversations. Hurst’s work focuses on promoting healthy relationships and promoting positive personhood, dismantling gendered stereotypes that men inhabit and encouraging them to explore their own relationships with masculinity. He has also spoken about the importance of allyship beyond the performative, and that men should take some space to “sort their own [stuff] out first” before they can become better allies.

 

Male Role Model #5: Dean Peacock – South Africa

Dean Peacock is co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Sonke Gender Justice, a multi-award winning South African NGO working in twenty five countries in Africa and globally to prevent gender-based violence, reduce the spread and impact of HIV and AIDS, and promote gender equality and human rights. Peacock challenges entrenched gender inequality in his native South Africa by “engaging men as change agents to tackle health and violence issues that stem from the way they relate to women and, in doing so…building a broad civic movement to re-shape the framework of manhood in Africa.” Peacock has worked for about 25 years on issues related to gender equality, men and constructions of masculinities, HIV and AIDS and social justice, and has also worked with and established other NGOs and education programmes in the US focusing on intimate partner violence perpetrators and youth. 

 

Male Role Model #6: Édgar Pérez – Guatemala

Édgar Pérez is the head of Bufete de Derechos Humanos (the Human Rights Law Firm) in Guatemala, and an internationally renowned litigator. He is currently still seeking justice in the case of the 41 girls who died in a fire in a state-run children’s home in 2017. The victims had been locked in a room as punishment for protests against the cramped living conditions and sexual abuse by staff. “[The home] should have been protecting these children, but started to take advantage of their vulnerability,” he says. He has previously represented victims of genocide and other human rights atrocities, mostly pro bono, relying on international support to fund his work. 

 

Male Role Model #7: Humberto Carolo – Canada

Humberto Carolo is the CEO of White Ribbon, a global movement of men and boys working to end VAW and promote gender equity and healthy masculinity. A globally-recognised gender-based violence prevention expert, Carolo works to engage men and boys as allies and provides technical assistance and expert guidance to organisations, governments, UN agencies and industry sectors worldwide. He speaks frankly about the harmfulness of traditional masculinity that is constructed within strict confines and challenges of change to the system of gender discrimination and patriarchy, which impacts both men and women: “We need to break the silence and treat gender-based violence as a human rights, public safety, and faith issue for leaders to prevent and end.”

 

Male Role Model #8:  Kennedy Odede – Kenya

Kennedy Odede is the founder of Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO), a grassroots organisation that works to catalyse transformation in urban slums through community advocacy, and education and leadership development for women and girls. Odede himself grew up in Kenya’s Kibera slum, the largest slum in Africa, and became a street child at the age of 10. He saved up money from his $1 a day factory job to start SHOFCO. One of the organisation’s most successful programmes is the tuition-free primary school Kibera School for Girls. The school has become one of the top 10 public schools in Nairobi and delivered a 100% transition rate to secondary education in a country where less than 20% of girls aged between 15 and 19 complete secondary school, achieving an early dream of Odede’s: “More and more girls are going to school in Kibera today. That was our dream, to change their mindset through education. Because education is freedom.” Odede was named one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2024 by Time magazine.

 

Male Role Model #9: Kim Nam-Joon (RM) – South Korea

Kim Nam-Joon, better known by his stage name RM, is the leader of BTS, the biggest K-Pop group in the world. Despite feminism being an extremely controversial subject in South Korea, he has spoken openly about his learning curve in feminism, starting in 2016 when fans called out the misogynistic lyrics in some of BTS’s songs, leading him to actively take women and gender studies classes and consult with a women’s studies professor on his song lyrics, something he still does.  In Beyond The Story, the 2023 BTS biography, he stated: “Because I was criticised early on, I could recognise the problem sooner. […] This was because I’d received clear comments and criticism about the raps I’d written as well as my views. The Gangnam Station murder happened around that time, and so from a woman’s perspective I think there was no choice but to speak out even more.” He has since used his enormous platform to influence pop culture and the arts in support of women. His actions have included posting on social media about feminist books that he has read such as the novel Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982 and highlighting Rha Hye-Seok, a painter who was the founder of Korea’s feminist movement, when he was invited to narrate the audio guide for the first South Korean art exhibition in the West.  

 

Male Role Model #10: Matt Tyler – Australia

Matt Tyler is the Executive Director of Community and Systems Impact at Jesuit Social Services, also known as The Men’s Project, an Australian organisation based in Jesuit Mission that works with communities to change the attitudes and conditions which interfere with boys’ and men’s capacity to live respectful, accountable and fulfilling lives. Tyler has actively called for engaging men and boys to prevent violence in society and spoken about the importance of working to equip role models of healthy and positive masculinity, and of cross-sector engagement because “working with men is one component of ending violence against women. Women and children’s services must be adequately funded to ensure a rounded approach to this issue”.

 

Male Role Model #11: Miguel Fontes – Brazil

Miguel Fontes is the founder and executive director of Promundo Institute, a non-governmental organisation that promotes gender equality and ending violence through joint discussions on masculinities and femininities. In 2020, he was named a Gender Equality Champion by Americas Quarterly magazine. In the accompanying interview, he said that  after almost a decade working on community and public health projects, it became clear that there was a strong gender component at the root of these public health problems. “Gender equality is key to changing the world,” he said in the same interview. “Women have been telling us (men) about our role in perpetuating gender inequality — and it’s time we listen.”

 

Male Role Model #12: Rahul Bose – India

Indian actor and director Rahul Bose is also a social activist and founder of The Foundation, a non-profit that is dedicated to removing discrimination from all walks of life. Bose is most famous for appearing in films with strong female characters and has said that films should be viewed through the lens of gender to ensure that men and women are given equal importance in stories brought to the big screen. He works closely with the Teach for India movement to eradicate inequity in education (something The Foundation also works toward) and has given lectures on gender equality and human rights at the University of Oxford.

 

Male Role Model #13: Shervin Hajipour – Iran

Shervin Hajipour was arrested and sentenced by the Iranian government in 2023 over the widespread protests triggered by the death of 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in police custody. Hajipour, a singer, was sentenced to three years in jail for “inciting and provoking people to riot to disturb national security” after his song “Baraye” (“For”) became a protest anthem. The song lyrics are made up of messages from Iranians about why they were protesting for increased rights for women and against Iran’s ruling theocracy. Posting on social media about his sentencing, Hajipour refused to reveal the name of the judge and prosecutor in the case to protect them from threats “because insults and threats are not in the religion of humanity. Finally, one day we will understand each other.”

 

Male Role Model #14: The Speech Prof AKA Professor Chesko – United States of America 

The Speech Prof or Professor Chesko (real name unknown) is an American content creator and podcast host who effectively uses his social platforms to talk about feminism, toxic masculinity, misogyny, violence against women, men’s mental health and more through funny and engaging videos. Offline, he is a theatre and communications professor at a community college in Los Angeles and director of a top US speech and debate team. Online, he uses his storytelling skills and insights from his own journey away from a toxic and abusive father to becoming a positive role model to his children to comment on social issues and provide frank advice to his hundreds of thousands of followers. Check him out on YouTube (@TheRealSpeechProf), Instagram (@TheSpeechProf), and TikTok (@SpeechProf).

 

Male Role Model #15: Tong Dawei – China

Acclaimed Chinese actor and singer Tong Dawei was appointed a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador for China in 2016. He uses his influence to create awareness about gender issues and promote gender equality. He has spoken about how people in China do not quite understand how much more has to be done for gender equality there and how he himself had “misunderstood HeForShe…as people think women are already ‘holding up half the sky’, especially at home”, adding that women should be given more chances to develop their full potential in society and not just at home. He has called for men to become advocates for gender equality as “women should not have to fight for their causes alone.”

 

Male Role Model #16: Wilfred Nyeko – Uganda

Wilfred Nyeko is an Ugandan local government Community Development Officer and land rights and gender activist who actively supports women’s development projects in his community. One of 15 men in Kitgum District in Uganda who participated in Spotlight Initiative-supported training sessions on gender equality, women’s rights and ending gender-based violence, he uses what he learned to act as a role model and agent for change for other men, especially when it comes to women’s land rights and access, which in Uganda is linked to gender-based violence. “As a male champion, I strive for gender inclusiveness and making gender parity a priority,” he said. “Being a male champion means reporting forms of abuse, acting as a source of change and inspiration for men, and being a role model for mindset change.”

 

Photo Credits: 

  1. Adilur Rahman Khan – From “Bangladesh: Quash Conviction and Release Rights Defenders” (Odhikar/FIDH)
  2. Bad Bunny – From Wikimedia Commons ( By Toglenn – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88940917)
  3. Benedict Cumberbatch – From Wikimedia Commons (By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America – Benedict Cumberbatch, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83192608)
  4. Ben Hurst – From A Call To Men
  5. Dean Peacock – From Sonke Gender Justice
  6. Édgar Pérez – From “Impunity’s Eclipse” (International Center for Transitional Justice/Daniele Volpe)
  8. Humberto Carolo – From White Ribbon
  9. Kennedy Odede – From Shining Hope for Communities
  10. Kim Nam-Joon – From Wikimedia Commons (By 티비텐 – YouTube (Time: 26) – View/save archived versions on archive.org and archive.today, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=144235914)
  11. Matt Tyler – From “Role models can free our men and boys from the Man Box” (Jesuit Social Services)
  12. Miguel Fontes – From Promundo
  13. Rahul Bose – From IMDB (Ben Hider/Getty Images)
  14. Shervin Hajipour – From Instagram @shervinine
  15. The Speech Prof – From LinkedIn – The Speech Prof AKA Professor Chesko
  16. Tong Dawei – From Wikimedia Commons (By 霍建华微吧 – http://wallacehuowebar.lofter.com/post/1dc120c7_c5db16c, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=146914810)
  17. Wilfred Nyeko – “From How male champions are helping to end gender-based violence in Uganda” (Spotlight Initiative/LandNet Uganda)