A/HRC/38/24 violence. 17 While men and boys may also suffer from discriminatory gender norms and stereotypes, ignoring the relative advantages and privileges men and boys enjoy as a result of such norms and stereotypes risks shifting the focus away from women and girls, who are disproportionately disadvantaged by them. 11. Other strategies of engagement with men and boys build on the idea that women deserve respect as mothers, sisters, wives and so on. These approaches may appear to be strategic in certain contexts of highly discriminatory societies or in order to implicate people in a more personal way. However, they risk maintaining social norms that value women only in their relation to others, rather than as autonomous human beings, entitled to all human rights. Such approaches also reaffirm patriarchal notions of men as “protectors” and, by extension, women as “victims”. 12. Some experiences indicate that even with good intentions, interventions to engage men and boys may have the inadvertent outcome of enhancing discriminatory gender stereotypes.18 Such interventions need constant monitoring of their impacts to avoid adverse effects. 19 Increasing support for engagement by men and boys, without attention to the potential adverse impact, may result in shifting support and resources away from women’s empowerment and women’s leadership and reinstating men’s domination. Such a result would be antithetical to gender equality because, as stated by the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, it would empower the group to which perpetrators belong — which overwhelmingly continues to maintain economic, political and societal structures of power, privilege and opportunity — to offer protection from violence and discrimination. 20 13. Finally, a potential risk of the framing as “engaging men and boys” is that such framing may limit the understanding of discriminatory gender relations and overlook discrimination and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons, including lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex women and girls. Violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons, including against non-binary persons, and violence against women and girls share common root causes, including the need to protect the existing power structure and prevent, discourage or punish behaviours that are perceived as challenging traditional gender norms and stereotypes. Violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons also hinders efforts to eliminate violence against women. For example, homophobia and transphobia may make men and boys reluctant to renounce patriarchal masculinity, for fear of being perceived as gay if they do not behave violently against women, girls and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons.21 Therefore, for interventions to be gender transformative, they have to combat gender-based violence in all its forms. III. Ongoing efforts and challenges faced 14. Contributions from various stakeholders and the research conducted pointed to a variety of initiatives and strategies to engage men and boys to promote and achieve gender equality, in particular to eliminate gender-based violence against women and girls. The present section summarizes several examples of such efforts 17 18 19 20 21 6 Ibid., paras. 72–73. See, for example, the submissions by the Centre for Health and Social Justice and Family Planning New South Wales. E.g. the submission by the MenEngage Alliance. See A/HRC/26/38, para. 72. Submission by Puntos de Encuentro. See also the submission by Sonke Gender Justice.