Curious about how boys grow up, men show up —
and how systems respond.

We build a clearer picture of how men's lives are unfolding in India — and work with institutions, markets, and media to act on that understanding. Because getting this right matters for everyone.

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What We Do

Building the shared intelligence
the field is missing.

The Centre for Men and Boys builds the shared intelligence needed to understand how men's lives are unfolding in India — and where systems need to respond differently.

At the core of this is sensemaking — bringing together lived realities, cultural signals, and institutional data to build a clearer, shared view.

Institutions are making decisions about men's lives without a shared understanding of how those lives are actually unfolding.

Learn About Sensemaking →
We
→Track how masculinities take shape across life stages
→Connect signals across education, work, markets, media, and digital ecosystems
→Surface patterns early — including those emerging in fast-moving online spaces
→Align actors across sectors who rarely work together
→Generate proof that shapes real institutional decisions
How Change Happens

Three pathways to
systemic change.

01
New Understanding

A grounded, cross-system view

How men's lives are unfolding across contexts — from education and work to care, identity, and digital life.

02
New Alliances

Coordination across sectors

Bringing together markets, media, and governance around a shared understanding — so actors who rarely meet can move together.

03
New Proofs

Evidence that delivers results

Demonstrating that more responsible approaches to men and masculinity produce better outcomes for individuals, organisations, and systems.

Where We Work

Men are influenced across three
interconnected systems.

Each system shapes aspiration, identity, and behaviour in distinct ways — and rarely speaks to the others.

Economic Systems

Education & Workforce

How boys move into work — and what work comes to demand over time. The lifespan problem no institution is currently tracking.

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Cultural Systems

Men's Representation

How markets and media shape aspiration and identity at scale — and where they can shift toward more grounded representations.

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Relational Systems

Care & Community

How care, connection, and responsibility are lived and negotiated — in friendships, relationships, families, and communities.

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Why This Matters

Without clearer understanding,
institutions act on partial views.

In India, masculinity takes shape through systems and relationships.

Without a clearer understanding of that process, institutions act on partial views — reinforcing instability, narrowing possibility, and missing opportunities for more equitable outcomes.

The consequences are already visible: workforce instability, weak engagement with care, and increasingly polarised narratives.

"CFMB exists to build the connective architecture the field is missing."
Sensemaking

Sensemaking sits at the centre
of how we work.

Across systems in India, there is no shared way of understanding how men's lives are actually unfolding.

Signals exist everywhere — across education, work, markets, media, and everyday life. But they remain scattered. Research sits in one place. Lived experience in another. Market signals move quickly, often without deeper interpretation.

What's missing is a way to hold these together — to see patterns as they form, and to understand what they mean.

The Gap

Signals exist everywhere.
But they remain scattered.

Research sits in one place. Lived experience in another. Market signals move quickly, often without deeper interpretation.

What's missing is a way to hold these together — to see patterns as they form, and to understand what they mean.

Our Lens

Drawing from three
converging streams.

◐
Lived Realities
Ethnographic research, field stories, subculture documentation, and voices from the peripheries — including those that fall outside the formal sensemaking funnel.
◈
Cultural Signals
How conversations, identities, and norms are forming across digital spaces — including fast-moving online environments where ideas about masculinity are actively shaped and contested.
◉
Institutional Data
Secondary datasets — NFHS, NCRB, PLFS — combined with media analysis and market intelligence to surface patterns before they become widely visible.
What We Do

Turning scattered signals
into usable intelligence.

This is where patterns begin to show up — how men relate to work, to their bodies, to care, to each other, and to society.

→Run deep, focused inquiries into under-examined questions on men's lives
→Combine ethnography, cultural analysis, and market intelligence
→Bring in signals from gossip, peripheries, subcultures, and under-engaged voices
→Track emerging narratives across digital ecosystems using computational tools
→Surface patterns that are not yet visible to institutions
→Translate these into usable insight for decision-makers across sectors
What This Makes Possible

Seeing the whole —
and acting with clarity.

Without a shared understanding, institutions respond in fragments. Sensemaking makes it possible to see the whole — and act with more clarity and coordination.

A Clearer View

How men's lives are unfolding

A cross-system picture that connects what education, work, markets, and media are each seeing — and what they are missing.

Earlier Signals

What is shifting before it's visible

Patterns forming in subcultures, digital spaces, and peripheral communities — before they reach mainstream institutions.

Shared Language

Ways of naming what is emerging

Frameworks and vocabulary that allow actors across sectors to understand the same reality — and begin to act in coordination.

Education & Workforce

In India, work sits at the centre of
how men are evaluated.

By institutions, by families, and by themselves.

The movement into work begins early and gathers weight over time. Aspiration meets pressure, exposure, and, for many, instability.

No one holds a full view of how boys move through these systems into adulthood — or how risks accumulate along the way.

The Gap

This is visible
across contexts.

Boys leaving school early, uneven participation in higher education, and growing dependence on informal and gig work as entry points.

Education systems, labour markets, and workplaces each engage parts of this journey. They operate independently.

No single system tracks how boys move through all three — or how the risks of that journey accumulate over time.

Our Lens

The making of men
through work.

Together, these systems shape not just employment outcomes, but how men understand work, self-worth, and responsibility.

Before Work
Capability Systems
Where boys form expectations, skills, and early ideas of responsibility — through schooling, family, peer culture, and community.
At Work
Production Systems
Where norms around endurance, risk, and output take hold — through sector culture, workplace practice, and economic pressure.
Across Both
Health & Wellbeing Systems
Where patterns of care, strain, and disengagement become visible — and where costs accumulate if left unaddressed.
What We Do

Building the intelligence layer
that connects systems.

Our work combines ecosystem mapping, sector-level analysis, targeted pilots in high-exposure sectors, and ecosystem activation.
→Map how pathways into work are structured — and where they break
→Identify how risk builds across education, entry, and early employment
→Design frameworks that connect wellbeing with productivity and retention
→Work with employers, platforms, and policymakers to test these models
→Generate evidence that shifts how workforce systems operate
Questions We're Working On

The inquiries shaping
our sensemaking.

Risk, exposure, and gendered norms in the workplace

What drives workforce instability in high-risk and high-exposure sectors — and can helping these systems examine gendered norms improve business outcomes?

Gig work and the making of a generation

As India approaches ~24 million gig workers over the next few years, what will this mean for a generation of men shaped by class, caste, and religion — and what does that cultural shift look like?

Supporting the world's largest adolescent male population

India is home to the world's largest adolescent population today. What capabilities matter most for adolescent boys right now — and are the systems around them building the right ones?

Why This Matters

When the pathway is not understood,
institutions respond too late.

When this pathway is not understood as a whole, institutions respond late — once instability is visible and harder to address.

Over time, this work evolves into workforce stability frameworks, predictive risk models, and sector benchmarks that shape how markets and governments respond to boys' and men's trajectories.
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Men's Representation

Markets and media are constantly putting out
images of what men should be.

And across India, those images travel fast.

Through platforms, peer cultures, and everyday consumption, these signals shape aspiration and behaviour at scale.

These signals are not peripheral — they are already shaping how men see themselves, and what they move towards.

The Gap

Men's lives are becoming more complex
than the roles presented to them.

This is visible in the rapid growth of fitness, grooming, and self-care markets — spaces where men are investing more in how they look, feel, and are perceived.

Representation is expanding, but unevenly. Influence is strong, but rarely grounded in a deeper understanding of men's lived realities.

Our Lens

Markets don't just reflect behaviour —
they help set its direction.

What is amplified becomes desirable. What is repeated becomes expected.

This is how norms take hold at scale — often ahead of research, policy, or public debate.

"In the absence of better insight, markets default to familiar narratives. At scale, those narratives shape how men see themselves — and what they come to believe is expected of them."
What We Do

Working with markets
to expand representation.

We build insight into how men interpret body, identity, and aspiration — and work with brands, creators, and platforms to shape more grounded narratives.
→Build insight into how men interpret body, identity, and aspiration
→Identify where markets are shifting — and where they remain limited
→Work with brands, creators, and platforms to shape more grounded narratives
→Prototype products, content, and community models that expand representation
→Generate evidence that makes these approaches viable at scale
Why This Matters

Narratives shape what men
believe is expected of them.

CFMB works with brands and creators who are ready to move toward more honest, expansive representations — and builds the evidence that makes those shifts credible and commercially viable.
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Care & Community

Across India, expectations of men in relationships
and communities are shifting.

Presence now carries weight alongside provision.

Care, responsibility, and emotional participation are becoming more visible — and more expected.

Most of this is being worked out in practice, without consistent support or shared language.

Our Lens

Care and accountability
at the centre of relationships.

Care sits at the centre of how men relate to others — and how they are held accountable within those relationships.

Across friendships, romantic relationships, and fatherhood, men are working out what it means to show up with presence, responsibility, and follow-through.

Fatherhood — changing expectations of presence, involvement, and emotional participation in children's lives

Romantic relationships — how men navigate responsibility, vulnerability, and mutual accountability

Friendships — the role of peer relationships in shaping emotional life and social norms

Community — how men participate in, withdraw from, and contribute to collective life

What We Do

Supporting care
alongside accountability.

→Map how men move into and through roles in relationships and fatherhood
→Study how expectations of care are negotiated across contexts
→Work with media, workplaces, and markets to shape more grounded norms
→Develop tools and narratives that support care alongside accountability
→Convene actors to align on more consistent approaches
Why This Matters

Where care is not supported,
the strain shows up everywhere.

Where care and accountability are not supported, the strain shows up in relationships, families, and communities.

Strengthening both changes how these systems hold together — and creates the conditions for men, and the people around them, to live better lives.
Work With Us →
Get in Touch

Let's build
something together.

Whether you are a funder, researcher, brand, policymaker, or someone who simply believes this work matters — we would like to hear from you.

CFMB is at an early stage, and the right conversations now will shape the field for years to come.

info@centreformenandboys.org →
Connect With Us
General Enquiriesinfo@centreformenandboys.org
Partnershipspartnerships@cfmb.in
Mediamedia@cfmb.in
LocationIndia
Areas of Partnership

How we work
with partners.

Philanthropic Funders

Support the intelligence layer

Fund the sensemaking and field-building work that commercial actors cannot yet sustain — and help build the shared infrastructure the field needs.

Brands & Market Partners

Expand what you know about men

Gain grounded insight into how masculinities are being lived — and work alongside CFMB to build narratives and products that expand representation.

Research & Institutional

Co-build shared frameworks

Co-design workforce intelligence frameworks and shared tools that become reference points for the wider field — and build the cumulative evidence base.

Policy & Government

Integrate a gendered lens

Draw on decision briefs, ecosystem maps, and policy-relevant insights to integrate an understanding of men's lives into education, labour, and health systems.

The Team

The people behind
the Centre.

Our Story

How CFMB
came to be.

The Centre for Men and Boys was born from the combined leadership journeys of its co-founders, Dilip Pattubala and Krishna Dahya. Over the last decade, Dilip worked with nearly a million women and girls through pioneering menstrual health and adolescent programs, while Krishna worked with hundreds of leaders globally, helping them navigate adaptive challenges and drive social change.

Though their professional paths were distinct, both arrived at a shared insight: understanding how systems hold and shape power — who has it, how it is maintained, and how it affects both those in control and those at the margins — is central to building a more just world.

From this understanding grew a focused commitment: to advance gender justice by addressing how power, especially masculine power, operates inside institutions. This belief led to the founding of the Centre: a space dedicated to examining how masculinity is institutionalized and how we can co-create systems that make space for healthier, fairer, more relational futures for everyone.

Co-founders
Krishna Dahya
Co-founder

Krishna Dahya

She has over a decade of experience working with leaders, organizations, and communities across India and the United States. She led the Acumen India Fellows Program and later shaped global leadership strategy. As a Foster America Fellow, she advanced child welfare reform in Colorado through participatory research with families and cross-system collaboration. She has taught adaptive leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and is passionate about creating spaces where communities shape the systems that impact their lives.

Dilip Pattubala
Co-founder

Dilip Pattubala

He has spent over 15 years working at the intersections of public health, gender, and systemic change. As co-founder of Uninhibited, he helped over a million women and girls across India gain greater dignity, voice, and access through menstrual health. As lead of the Menstrual Health Hub, he brought together a global coalition of 950 organizations to push menstrual health higher on the global agenda. He is deeply passionate about reshaping gender norms and engaging men and boys in building healthier, more inclusive futures.

Team
Sakshi Srivastava
Research Consultant

Sakshi Srivastava

She has spent the last five and a half years working at the intersections of menstrual health and gender justice as a participatory researcher and monitoring and evaluation practitioner. She believes research should not just study people but be shaped by them, and is passionate about exploring how structures and systems impact everyday lives. Her approach is guided by care, nuance, and justice.

Anchor Partner

CFMB is made possible with the generous support of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, our founding anchor partner.

Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies
Join Us

We're building
the team.

CFMB is an early-stage organisation. We're looking for people who are curious, rigorous, and care deeply about gender justice — and who want to help build something that doesn't yet exist.

If you don't see a role that fits but feel aligned with the mission, write to us anyway.

info@centreformenandboys.org →
Open Positions
Field & Network
Field Orchestrator
Full-time · India-based

The most generative knowledge comes from the edges — from who isn't usually in the room, and what isn't usually considered signal. This role is how that belief becomes practice. Part listener, part connector, part translator — keeping the network connected and the knowledge honest.

Write to us →
Communications
Communications Lead
Full-time · India-based

Communication is core to the work at CFMB. This role holds how the Centre is seen and heard — what we say, where we show up, and how consistently we do it. It shapes how boys and men are understood, and how this work is engaged with. It involves holding tensions: between care and accountability, between clarity and complexity, and building language that can carry both.

Write to us →
Resources

What we're reading,
writing, and learning.

This is where we share outputs from our sensemaking work, notes from our convenings, and resources we find useful. It's a working library — added to as we learn.

From Our Convenings

Notes & reflections
from the field.

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From Our Sensemaking

Research, briefs,
and field notes.

Field Note · 2026

Coming soon — check back shortly

We'll be sharing research notes and field briefs here as our sensemaking work develops.

Coming soon →
Field Note · 2026

Coming soon — check back shortly

We'll be sharing research notes and field briefs here as our sensemaking work develops.

Coming soon →
Stay Connected

Get updates as
we publish.

We share new resources, convening notes, and field updates as they come. Write to us to be added to our list.

info@centreformenandboys.org →

"We share what we're learning as we learn it — not polished pronouncements, but honest dispatches from a field in formation."