Five schools have been chosen to start gender violence prevention training
A key part of the training with the Men's Development Network is tackling the ‘bystander’ effect, which is encouraging men to speak up to others about behaviour.
Author and Educator Dr Jackson Katz told Newstalk Breakfast there is a misconception around assault.
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"We all know that domestic abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment have long been considered women's issues," he said.
"A big part of my work for a long time has been to reframe that and say that this is really about men.
"There's been so many men who have been in positions of leadership who are otherwise good, strong men and leaders - but they don't do anything, or do much at all, about the issues of gender based violence."
Bystander approach
Dr Katz said the bystander approach needs to see more men challenge the status quo.
"The bystander approach... is how people in peer cultures, known peer cultures in schools and in communities and in families and social networks, why people see situations around them they know are wrong, including young men, and that they don't do anything about it," he said.
Dr Katz said this is in part "because they know that there's a cost to pay for speaking up."
"For a young man to challenge his friend who's just made a really derisive negative comment about a woman or about women in general - if he turns to him and says, 'That's not cool or that's not funny' - there is often going to be social awkwardness and blowback.
"A lot of men and young men freeze up in the face of that, and they know that this is coming, so they often don't do anything.
"So, the bystander approach is about helping people using scenarios and real0life situations, helping people think through what their options are for doing something in these kinds of situations."
Social norms
Dr Katz said a change in attitude starts in schools.
"It's changing the social norms that accept misogyny and derisive and negative comments and thoughts and beliefs about women and girls that are that is still extremely common in our societies," he said.
"If you get to the point where... it becomes obvious that it's socially unacceptable for men and young men to talk negatively about women, then we'll have achieved a place where we'll have significant reductions in sexual assault, sexual harassment [and] domestic violence.
"Those crimes and those abuses don't come out of nowhere.
They're not just individual psychopathy or sociopathy, there's a there's a pyramid.
"The tip of the pyramid is the incident of abuse nut the base of the pyramid is a set of attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that create the cultural context and foundation."
Gisèle Pelicot
Dr Katz said the case of Gisèle Pelicot in France shows we cannot be "naive".
Ms Pelicot (71) was drugged by her now ex-husband over the course of a decade so that she could be raped by dozens of men while unconscious.
"Look at the mass rape case in France - we have we have dozens of men who have been arrested and have been charged with sexually assaulting this [woman]," he said.
"Those men were just all like average men from the community, many of them married with children, and they were engaged in this behaviour.
"So, the idea that somehow we can just isolate the problem of domestic abuse in Ireland or sexual assault to individual, crazy men or deeply damaged men, as opposed to thinking about the norms that underlie the abuse - that's naive," he added.
