Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 8 October 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

Examination of the Drivers of Violence and Criminality: Discussion

4:00 pm

Dr. Sharon Lambert:

The first question was about socialisation of young men. That is about how we as a society construct notions of what it is to be a boy. If a boy is involved in fighting for example, and we say things like "boys will be boys", those kinds of things not only hurt women later in life, they hurt boys. There is a huge amount of social psychology about how we socialise boys and girls. If children in a classroom are asked to draw a picture of a soldier, they will draw a man. If they are asked to draw a picture of a nurse, they will draw a woman. We still have a society where we say men behave in a particular way.