, Executive summary

The RealStrength Alliance is not a temporary campaign, but a long-term, systemic partnership that aims to shift the cultural norm around masculinity in the Netherlands structurally and positively. The current approach to unhealthy masculinity and gender-based violence is not yet complete: much goes to the consequences and little to the roots of the behaviour. The Alliance turns off the tap at the source.

The core of the problem is what behavioural science calls 'precarious manhood': masculinity is not seen as a given, but as a social status you can lose at any moment. That permanent status anxiety, the 'Man Box', is the breeding ground for abusive behaviour and exacts a heavy toll on men themselves. The costs of this culture are enormous: gender-based violence costs Dutch society an estimated 14 billion euros a year, of which more than 11 billion concerns the share affecting women, and men in the Netherlands die by suicide more than twice as often as women.

The damage runs into billions a year; investing at the source costs a fraction of that. Exactly how much, we measure in phase 0.

This document sets out why a national coalition is needed, what the Alliance is, what partners get back, the approach and its phases, the governance, the investment and the return, and how we create impact together. The Alliance is an initiative of The Nami Foundation.

01Why this alliance is needed

Imagine that in thirty years we live in a Netherlands where respectful masculinity is the norm. Where girls cycle to school without fear and boys grow up knowing that strength and care are inseparable. This future is not a utopia, but a necessary transformation we have to start today. We are at a critical tipping point: the call for safety and equality is growing louder, but the underlying mechanisms that hold men in outdated roles remain largely untouched.

Masculinity as a permanent exam

In our culture, masculinity is not seen as a biological given, but as a social status you have to earn and can lose at any moment. This creates a permanent state of status anxiety. For many men, masculinity feels like an exam they have to pass again every day. When this status is threatened, some men respond with aggression or risk-taking to save their identity in the eyes of the group. The 'Man Box', the set of rigid norms about dominance and emotional repression, is not an identity but an exhausting full-time job of reputation management.

The pyramid of violence

Sexual misconduct and violence against women are not a collection of isolated incidents, but the tip of an iceberg resting on a broad base of normalised behaviour.

• The base of the pyramid: micro-aggressions, sexist jokes and the social exclusion of men who do not meet the norm.
• The mechanism: when men do not call each other out on this behaviour for fear of losing status themselves, a culture emerges in which crossing the line becomes normal.
• The escalation: the broader the base of normalised behaviour in an environment, the more often violence occurs in that environment. That is a relationship at group level: it does not predict which individual man will use violence, and the pyramid is not a ladder people climb.

Turning off the tap: from treating symptoms to prevention at the source

The RealStrength Alliance stops treating symptoms and turns off the tap at the source. By giving men the room to become 'complete men', we reduce the need to prove themselves and to intimidate; we do not fight the fire, we take away its oxygen. Only when a man no longer has to defend his place in the group at every turn does room open up to make him actively capable in the safety of women, and does he grow from a free man into an active, safe ally.

The system fault that costs us billions

The costs of the current culture are enormous, and they fall into two connected parts. First, the costs of the violence itself: the societal costs of gender-based violence in the EU-27 are estimated at 366.3 billion euros a year, of which 290.3 billion is attributable to violence against women. Translated to the Netherlands, that comes to 14.2 billion euros for women and men together, and 11.2 billion for the share concerning women; Rutgers uses the same estimate. More than half of that amount (56%) concerns monetised physical and emotional suffering, and therefore not actual expenditure; 21% goes to police and the courts, 14% to lost productivity. Each year, 12% of people in the Netherlands aged 16 and over experience sexual transgressive behaviour, women more than twice as often as men (16% against 7%). Statistics Netherlands (CBS), Prevalence Monitor 2024; EIGE (2021), The costs of gender-based violence in the European Union; Rutgers (2025), What works in preventing sexual transgressive behaviour.

On top of that there is the 'Man Box Tax': the bill for the failing norm of masculinity itself, on the men's side. Absenteeism, dropout, health costs and lost productivity caused by men who bottle up their tension instead of regulating it. The 'hard' norm forces men into emotional repression, which leads to loneliness and serious health problems; the fact that men in the Netherlands die by suicide more than twice as often is painful evidence of the failure of the current frameworks of masculinity. Companies and municipalities pay the price through absenteeism, turnover, reputational damage, heavy pressure on support services and a growing sense of insecurity.

We have a chance now

The need for change is widely felt. Our #RealStrength campaign proved the potential: with one simple question, "Ask a woman how often she feels unsafe", we started a national conversation about safety, masculinity, boundaries and respect without any media budget, with an estimated reach of more than a million people in the Netherlands. The evidence behind this reach figure is available on request. The spark has caught, but the fuel for lasting cultural change is still missing. The Netherlands already does a great deal here: there is national policy against domestic and sexual violence, there is an expert network around prevention (Act4Respect, run by Atria, Rutgers and COC), and Emancipator has focused specifically on boys and men for years. That work is good, but what is still missing is the layer around it: one long-term, recognisable story that reaches the average person, with imagery, language and material that everyone is free to use.

Our mission: safety through freedom

Our end goal is not to set a new exam for men, but to abolish the exam. We change being a man from a constant performance into a human experience in which you no longer have to prove anything to belong. This is not a choice between protecting her or freeing him: protection and shelter remain just as necessary. By breaking the measuring stick of the 'man box', we remove one of the most important breeding grounds beneath that lack of safety.

Safety for women and freedom for men come from the same source: the same norm causes both.

02What is the EchtMannelijk Alliance?

The RealStrength Alliance is a long-term, systemic partnership. It forms the link between scientific insight, government policy and the daily reality of men and women in the Netherlands. The RealStrength Alliance aims to combine the strengths of government, municipalities, business and knowledge institutions around one sharply defined goal: shifting the cultural norm around masculinity structurally and positively. The Alliance works towards a culture in which respect, equality and safety are not the result of rules or punishment, but grow out of a new, healthy definition of being a man. We do this with men and women alike. Positive, welcoming and inclusive.

The three roles of the Alliance

• Continuity across generations: the Alliance provides the stability a norm shift over a horizon of 20 to 50 years requires, independent of political cycles or one-off funding.
• Translating the science: the Alliance translates complex insights from the behavioural sciences into scalable interventions and a strong national narrative.
• Focus on the mainstream: not the 'inner circle' that is already convinced, but the average Dutch person. We create the social context in which respectful masculinity becomes the most attractive and logical choice.

From rules to norms

Real safety is not the result of more enforcement or stricter rules, but of a healthy culture. It shifts the focus from "what is not allowed" to "who we want to be". For government we offer a single delivery platform; for business, a way to contribute to social safety and the mental health of employees; for knowledge institutions, a laboratory to test insights at national scale.

03What partners get back

The Alliance offers no traditional sponsorship contract, but a strategic partnership in a scientifically grounded system transformation. We supply the data, the methodology and the narrative to reduce the societal and economic costs of outdated norms of masculinity (the 'Man Box Tax') within the context of our partners.

Intelligence: understanding the audience

We measure not only what men say they think, but also how they estimate the norm within their group and what they actually do. Partners gain access to unique data on status anxiety, group pressure and the real frictions within their specific audiences or sectors. This is done with precision segmentation per social world, from the building site to the lecture halls of universities: no 'one size fits all', but the 'sweet spot' between inviting and confronting for each context. Partners gain access to the results. The research agenda is set by the independent scientific advisory board and carried out by independent knowledge institutions. Partners can propose themes, but have no say in the research question, method or publication. Results are made public, even when they are unfavourable to the Alliance.

The nine worlds

Tipping the culture takes a determined vanguard; exactly how large it needs to be we do not know, but a committed minority is often enough to make a norm turn. We map nine worlds, seven social worlds where the 'Man Box' is strongly present, plus two that cut across them: a channel-plus-risk segment and a setting that cuts through all the others:

• The practical builders, construction, engineering and logistics, with a 'less talk, more graft' mentality.
• The academic status-seekers, young men at universities and in student fraternities.
• The corporate high achievers, professionals in the Zuidas financial district and in finance or tech, with high status anxiety.
• The man in care & education, men in 'feminine' sectors who feel their masculinity under pressure and overcompensate reactively, while in fact they already embody the complete man.
• The young man exposed to the manosphere, young people whose male identity is largely formed online; a channel-plus-risk segment, not an age group.
• The sport & locker-room man, men in amateur and grassroots sport, where the group dynamic in the locker room sets the tone.
• Honour and reputation cultures, worlds in which honour and respect are the highest currency, across ethnic lines, from street culture to traditional and religious communities. We test case by case whether the precarious manhood model holds here.
• The traditional regional man, men in rural areas with a strong sense of community and traditional role patterns.
• The relational context, the man as partner and father at home; the setting closest to the violence, and one that runs through every other world.

Return on safety and wellbeing

For central government and municipalities: data-driven prevention, cost savings over time through less pressure on healthcare, support services and the justice system, and national coordination that prevents fragmentation. For companies and employers: higher psychological safety (more innovation, less toxic leadership), a cut in sickness absence by tackling the root cause of burnout, and stronger employer branding and talent retention.

Scalable impact architecture

We deliver an integrated plug-and-play system: the science, the audience insights, a central content library with ready-made packages (video, social, print) and workshop formats, plus a strategic PR position with joint media appearances. As a partner you also join a growing coalition from government, business, education and science that carries the change together. We set the course through co-creation, transparently and together with society rather than outside it.

04Approach & phasing

Cultural change is not a one-off intervention, but a carefully built process that takes years. Our method puts precision above 'one size fits all': for each world we map the 'architecture of the norm', look for the psychological sweet spot between confrontation and invitation, and speak the language of each sub-audience in its own context. The transformation is delivered in eight phases that largely run in parallel on different timelines, supported by a parallel learning track that trains the people around men (women, colleagues) to recognise and stop the 'social punishment' of new behaviour.

• Phase 0, Research & baseline measurement: making the invisible costs of the current culture tangible through the 'Man Box Tax'.
• Phase 1, The unmasking: showing men that the 'Man Box' harms them too, intrinsic motivation through insight.
• Phase 2, The new heroes: a strong alternative script with positive role models; autonomous, caring and emotionally intelligent.
• Phase 3, The training programme: from insight to ingrained behaviour, through guided training that runs over multiple sessions and multiple months; one-off sessions shift attitudes at best, not behaviour. International programmes vary widely in size, from a few hours to almost fifty hours in total; which dosage the Dutch context requires is something we establish in phase 0. Men practise self-regulation, connection, ownership and breaking the silence, until stepping in becomes a reflex.
• Phase 4, Demolishing barriers: employers and public bodies adjust the 'architecture of the norm', so that HR, leave and informal culture enable new behaviour instead of punishing it.
• Phase 5, The status shift: redefining status from 'dominance over others' to 'generativity', the power to help others grow.
• Phase 6, Generation 0: breaking the intergenerational cycle through the father-son relationship.
• Phase 7, Radical autonomy: 'being a man' as a personal style within a whole humanity; the 'Man Box' becomes irrelevant.

Monitoring

We measure whether the culture is actually shifting, not just whether we are reaching people, using validated, internationally recognised instruments, at three levels: the shift in norms and attitudes (do men feel less pressure to conform?), behaviour (the redistribution of care, and stepping in when a line is crossed) and the social and economic return (the fall in the Man Box Tax, translated into lower absenteeism and higher productivity). Taking part in research is always voluntary, with informed consent and careful privacy safeguards.

05Governance and organisation

To guarantee continuity and scientific integrity, RealStrength is housed within The Nami Foundation, an independent foundation for social change that acts as the legal and strategic vehicle of the movement. Day-to-day delivery is handled by Nami BV, the executing agency, on the foundation's instructions. The foundation carries several long-term social programmes, of which RealStrength is one. To keep the relationship between foundation and executing agency clean, one of the safeguards is that the foundation's board has three members and that none of them has a financial interest in Nami BV. Board composition and accountability are published on stichtingnami.nl/en. This structure is designed to bridge the long term (20 to 50 years) and to protect the mission from the issues of the day. RealStrength starts within The Nami Foundation so it can build quickly and flexibly; once the movement stands firmly enough, we intend to make it independent in its own RealStrength foundation with its own independent board. The current structure is therefore deliberately a starting point, not an end point.

Foundation, steering group and advisory board

The foundation manages the multi-year strategic framework, the budget, the contracting of research institutes and the annual accountability report. The steering group consists of delegates from the core partners (central government, the four largest Dutch cities (G4) and the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG), business and knowledge institutions) and the initiator (Nami). An independent scientific advisory board guards the course: it tests every major intervention against the behavioural science foundations and directs the research programme.

The scientific firewall

To safeguard objectivity, the Alliance maintains a strict separation between strategy, research and review. As initiator, Nami translates scientific insight into strategic and creative interventions; independent knowledge institutions carry out the actual research and measurement; and the advisory board validates whether campaigns stay true to the data. Because the initiator has a role in both the foundation and the executing agency, four safeguards apply: an independent foundation board, pre-approved market-rate fees, separation of roles in decision-making, and external scrutiny through an auditor’s report and public impact reporting. A transparent annual cycle closes each period with a norm measurement, a Man Box Tax report and a financial accountability statement.

06Investment & return (indicative)

The Alliance is building a self-sustaining financial ecosystem rather than relying on one-off project grants. To cover the start-up costs and the first year of delivery, a foundation of roughly 10 to 12 tier 1 partners is needed, a strategic mix of government ministries, the four largest Dutch cities (G4) and national corporates funding the infrastructure that the rest of the Netherlands then uses.

The tier model

• Tier 1, Strategic founding partners: government ministries, the G4 cities and large corporates. Contribution by agreement, with a seat on the steering group and direct influence on the multi-year plan.
• Tier 2, Alliance partners: the G40 mid-sized municipalities and national organisations. Contribution from €20,000 a year, with full access to the annual toolkits and audience insights.
• Tier 3, Network partners: SMEs, smaller municipalities and regional institutions. Contribution from €2,500 a year, with use of the core materials and a place in the movement.

The multiplier and the return

After the start-up phase, the marginal cost per new partner is close to zero. The Alliance actively pursues national contributions and European grants (such as CERV and Horizon Europe) and private funds. We are not a competitor of existing knowledge organisations. On the contrary, we aim to bring resources to them: pooled capital flows through the foundation into research they carry out and whose results they publish themselves. Every euro is a direct reduction of the 'Man Box Tax'; by developing research and creative work once, centrally and at a high level, all partners share the costs and gain access to a level of precision and production that would be out of reach individually.

The collective investment in one central, validated system is many times more cost-efficient than the sum of fragmented local initiatives.

07How we create impact together

The Alliance only succeeds if partners see the transformation not as an external project, but as part of their own course. We work on the basis of reciprocity and shared ownership:

• Financial foundation and continuity: a multi-year commitment (at least 3 years) secures the stability to run the 'marathon' this takes.
• Operational system integration: partners embed the interventions and toolkits in their own HR, communications and policy, and put their own channels to work.
• Scientific transparency: an 'open kitchen' policy with data sharing, cooperation with research and participation in the annual impact evaluation.
• The integrity axis, walk the talk: partners sign up to the code of conduct, counter behaviour that reinforces the 'Man Box', and commit for the long term.

Joining means taking an active role in the most important social innovation of the coming decades. We bring the method, the data and the scale; we ask for the mandate and the delivery.

08Conclusion, the social dividend

The EchtMannelijk Alliance is the move away from mopping the floor with the tap still running. We stop putting plasters on the consequences of transgressive behaviour and start repairing the infrastructure that produces it. This plan works because it does not try to repair the 'Man Box', it simply snaps the measuring stick in half: we end the exhausting, constant audition for masculinity and help men become the version of themselves they already want to be, authentic, connected and at ease in their own skin.

The norm that exhausts men is the same norm that makes women less safe. Address one and you touch the other. This is not a choice between protecting her or freeing him: protection and shelter remain just as necessary. The willingness is there in society, the methodology is ready and the momentum is historically strong. Thirty years from now (the time a child needs to grow up with the new norm and become a parent and role model in turn) we will look back on this moment as the tipping point where we stopped talking about the problem and started building the solution.

The question is not whether this change is needed, but who has the courage to fund it.

About this document & sources

The EchtMannelijk Alliance is an initiative of The Nami Foundation. This action plan is the business case for social change. The detailed design of the interventions per phase is set out in our strategy document #EchtMannelijk, Strategy for cultural change, which we share with partners; the underpinning is set out in the whitepaper "Masculinity: a new beginning".

Key figures & sources

• European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) (2021), The costs of gender-based violence in the European Union (€366.3 bn/year in the EU-27; €14.2 bn translated to the Netherlands).
• Rutgers (2025), What works in preventing sexual transgressive behaviour.
• Statistics Netherlands (CBS), Prevalence Monitor on domestic violence and sexual transgressive behaviour 2024.
• CBS (Statistics Netherlands) & Atria, Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History, femicide figures.
• 113 Suicide Prevention & Statistics Netherlands (CBS), figures on suicide in the Netherlands.
• Equimundo (formerly Promundo), The Man Box study.
• Vandello, J. A., & Bosson, J. K., Precarious manhood.