On December 10 2020, The Gender & Diversity Hub organized a Brown Bag Lunch Conversation entitled “Gender equality benefits all: How gender equality improves health outcomes in adolescents and why it is beneficial for boys and men”. Speakers were dr. Margreet de Looze, Assistant Professor Interdisciplinary Social Science, and Jens van Tricht, founder and director Emancipator and member of the Steering Committee of the European MenEngange Alliance.

During this session, Margreet de Looze presented her work on the link between national-level gender equality and adolescent health outcomes. One of her studies reveals that adolescents have a higher life satisfaction when living in countries with high levels of gender equality, compared to countries with low levels of gender equality. This association persists when taking economic factors such as national wealth and income inequality into account. Not only girls, but also boys appear to benefit from higher levels of societal gender equality. The association between gender equality and adolescent life satisfaction was explained by social support within the family, peer and school context. Potentially, gender equality in society fosters more socially supportive relationships, for example in the family context through more equal involvement of fathers and mothers in child rearing. Thus, promoting gender equality may benefit all members of a society; not just by giving equal rights to women and girls, but also by fostering a supportive social climate for all.

Jens van Tricht gave a presentation on how boys and men benefit from feminism, too. Jens is the founder and director of Emancipator, which is a Dutch organisation for men and gender justice and he is also member of the Steering Committee of the European MenEngage Alliance. According to Van Tricht, transforming dominant images of masculinity and allowing men to become more human is of utmost interest for both men and women, for children, and for the world at large.