Moving Beyond Allyship: Masculinities and Systems Change in Asia

This December, feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements, grassroots organisers, and MenEngage Alliance members from across South Asia and beyond gather in Kathmandu to deepen collective analysis, strengthen cross-movement solidarity, and build strategies for structural change.

Why this convening?

Across Asia, authoritarianism, nationalism, and anti-rights backlash are rising. This Convening is a direct response, built on a simple premise: engaging men and boys in gender justice only matters if it is accountable to feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements, not performed alongside them.

What it centres

• Accountability. Answerable to the movements leading this work.
• Care. A collective, structural responsibility, not an individual or feminised one.
• Resistance. A direct response to rising authoritarianism and anti-rights mobilisation.
• Justice. Structural, intersectional change, centring queer, trans, disabled, indigenous, and caste-marginalised experiences.

Who’s in the room?

Partners and participants from Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, South Korea, and Cambodia, alongside MenEngage’s Youth Reference Group. Feminist and LGBTQIA+ organisations stand alongside the Alliance as co-conveners, shaping the agenda and holding it to account.

Part of a larger journey

The Asia Regional Convening is one point on a continuum, alongside regional symposiums across the Alliance, building toward the 4^th MenEngage Global Symposium in 2027. What surfaces in Kathmandu carries forward, into the Alliance’s ongoing work and onto the global stage.

Read our story of regional to global convenings here. 

Looking to register for the Asia Convening? Click here.