Initial Outcomes & Key Actions - May 2005 NZ Men's Issues Summit
Missed the Summit? Watch it on video:
The speakers at the Summit held in Auckland on 6th May 2005 were filmed by Murray Bacon and Bryan Norton, and the videos have been formatted for the web by John Potter. You can download the videos at MENZ.org.nz.
The following were points made in discussion at the conclusion of the Summit in the context that the Summit needs to be an ongoing organisation in some form.
- The NZ Men's Issues Summit has major concerns about the welfare and well-being of our boys and the future generations of our children. We need especially to raise the challenge to Government agencies, social services and educational institutions about the well-being of our boys and the next generation of young men.
- The NZ Men's Issues Summit needs to raise a personal and social awareness of men's health and self-care.
- Our common vision or cause is the wellbeing of men both socially and emotionally.
- Our intention for the future is to assist men to take responsibility for themselves, to advocate and develop better social services, health, education and relational rights, to work in equal partnership and mutual respect with women. We also expect that mutual partnership and respect from women.
- New Zealand society needs to make it safe to talk about issues. In many places and situations there is a negative response to men talking about men's needs and a male perspective. Having the words, concepts and information is essential to the ability to speak out.
- Many of the men who have decision-making positions of influence are not representing men and should not be considered to be doing so. Such men are often compounding and continuing the problems that men face (for example managers of District Health Boards).
- We need to speak in a passionate energised, and strong way to be heard. This is because many men feel hindered by personal and gender shame, and need to overcome this and their passivity to speak proudly. Men are entitled to have concerns, voice them and have them heard.
- Supportive and caring attitudes from men to other men are essential to men and boys and are often the missing link in men's lives.
- The political gendering of the media, government policy, and local policy needs to be decoded and an equal perspective developed.
- The NZ Men's Issues Summit needs the support, critique and debate of the media in its advocacy in order to change public, especially male, consciousness.
- New Zealand men urgently need courageous leadership that acts with concern for men, promoting responsibility and solutions to the deepening problems.
- The NZ Men's Issues Summit needs ways of giving continuous support to those who take on leadership.
- New Zealand men must generate spirit and wairua as we advocate otherwise we risk imbalance in men's lives. We need leadership - with spirit, courage, inspiration to overcome the current passivity.
- A networking point is needed and a website with list e-mails is a good way of doing this.
- The NZ Men's Issues Summit will have another summit within the next 6 months at another location in NZ.
- The NZ Men's Issues Summit will promote the notion of an agency at government level to advocate and make policy comment on behalf of men. Such an agency could be a Parliamentary Commission on Men's Affairs, a Men's Commissioner, or a Ministry of Men's Affairs.
- Such efforts need to be funded. There is a strange void around funding that comes from the assumption that men don't need help and if they do what sort of men are they?
- The NZ Men's Issues Summit needs to develop a hub or central point of general advocacy that can link with government and policy makers, and those delivering services. Such a hub may also create community and move issues forward.
- The members of the speaker's panel who represented subject areas from their own base of considerable experience and expertise might best represent sub-hubs or issue topics.
- These and following outcomes will be communicated to all attendees of this Summit.