Disintegration conflicts and the restructuring of masculinity

Protracted, armed, intranational conflict thrives in many spots and regions around the world. Much of the gender and development literature on armed conflict implies that men control decision-making relating to armed conflict and that the fighting itself is an exclusively male domain. Women are perceived and portrayed as the victims of violence, yet ensure survival and continuity in post-conflict situations. However, this depiction seriously oversimplifies men's and women's roles. As relief and development agencies attempt to address the dynamics of organized violence and protracted conflicts which increasingly impede or confuse their work, gender analysis and policy will need to be re-examined and widened to include the issue of male gender identity. The complexity of conflict, gender and armed conflict, reasons for participation in conflict, conflict and contests in constructing masculinity, subverting the warrior discourse, and restructuring masculinity are discussed.     

Women, Language and Identity

This paper explores the ways in which women and men use language to mark gender boundaries, and to convey femininity and masculinity in the construction of a gendered identity. The first section of the paper examines evidence that language serves as a gender identity marker not only in the particular phonological variants used more by women than by men, but also in the wider stylistic range evident in women's discourse in some communities. The gender distribution and social meanings associated with particular pragmatic particles and interactional devices provide another indication of the ways in which women and men construct and express femininity and masculinity in interaction. The final section analyses the construction of stereotypical gender identities through conversational interaction, firstly by means of a narrative and secondly through the carefully crafted dialogue of an advertisement. The paper demonstrates the complementary nature of macro-level quantitative studies and qualitative ethnographic analysis in gender research.     

Gender Roles, Externalizing Behaviors, and Substance Use Among Mexican-American Adolescents

A sample of 60 male and 91 female Mexican-American adolescents (age 13-18) were administered measures of positive (i.e., assertive masculinity, affective femininity) and negative (i.e., aggressive masculinity, submissive femininity) gender roles, internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors, peer substance use, and own substance use (alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana). Negative gender roles were significantly correlated with internalizing and externalizing problems for both boys and girls, with aggressive masculinity also predicting peer substance use for both genders. Assertive masculinity significantly predicted lower alcohol use in boys, and this effect was not mediated by internalizing problems, externalizing problems, or peer substance use. Negative gender roles significantly predicted higher alcohol use in girls, but this effect was almost completely mediated by internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and peer substance use. Results are discussed in terms of gender role socialization among Mexican Americans.     

‘Show us your frilly,pink underbelly’: Men administrative assistants doing masculinities and femininity

Research on men tokens (or numerical minorities) at work has focused on the processes by which men try to claim hegemonic masculine identities for themselves and how workplace interactants support or reject these attempts. In contrast to masculinity studies, token theory has paid less attention to non‐hegemonic masculinities. Using interviews with men administrative assistants, I develop a more comprehensive understanding of men tokens' gender performances and their significance for gender inequality. I present a four‐part typology: hegemonic masculinity, alternative masculinity, critical masculinity and male femininity. The categories are differentiated along two axes: support for hegemonic masculinity and support for hierarchical, binary gender.     

Feminism and Military Gender Practices: Israeli Women Soldiers in "Masculine" Roles

Women's military service is the focus of an ongoing controversy because of its implications for the gendered nature of citizenship. While liberal feminists endorse equal service as a venue for equal citizenship, radical feminists see women's service as a rei•cation of martial citizenship and cooperation with a hierarchical and sexist institution. These debates, however, tend to ignore the perspective of the women soldiers themselves.
This paper seeks to add to the contemporary debate on women's military service the subjective dimension of gender and national identities of women soldiers serving in "masculine" roles. I use a theory of identity practices in order to analyze the interaction between state institutions and identity construction. Based on in-depth interviews, I argue that Israeli women soldiers in "masculine" roles shape their gender identities according to the hegemonic masculinity of the combat soldier through three interrelated practices: (1) mimicry of combat soldiers' bodily and discursive practices; (2) distancing from "traditional femininity"; and (3) trivialization of sexual harassment.
These practices signify both resistance and compliance with the military dichotomized gender order. While these transgender performances subvert the hegemonic norms of masculinity and femininity, they also collaborate with the military androcentric norms. Thus, although these women soldiers individually transgress gender boundaries, they internalize the military's masculine ideology and values and learn to identify with the patriarchal order of the army and the state. This accounts for a pattern of "limited inclusion" that reaf•rms their marginalization, thus prohibiting them from developing a collective consciousness that would challenge the gendered structure of citizenship.     

Towards understanding the Nordic paradox: A review of qualitative interview studies on intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) in Sweden

Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is a major public health problem in countries around the world, including the Nordic region. Contrary to what would be expected, as the Nordic countries are rated among the most gender equal in the world, survey data suggests that the lifetime prevalence rates of IPVAW in Sweden and neighboring Nordic countries are among the highest in the EU. This phenomenon, which has been termed the Nordic paradox, requires elucidation. The aim of this review is to explore what previous qualitative studies, based on interviews with or field observations of victims, perpetrators, or professionals working in the area, primarily in Sweden, have to teach us about the nature of this paradox. Three interrelated themes are discussed. The first is how gender equality is perceived and addressed as linked, or not, to IPVAW in Swedish research and practice. The second is how violence tends to be othered, for example, through assumptions that violence is perpetrated by foreign rather than Swedish men. The third is how causal mechanisms of IPVAW have been described, typically with reference to norms and dynamics of masculinity, femininity, and heterosexual interaction.     

Victims and Vamps,Madonnas and Whores

This article explores how the US ‘war on drugs’ depends on certain notions of femininity and womanhood. In particular, I examine how female drug couriers from the Americas are constructed at US border sites of international airports in the 1990s. I find that female drug couriers are described in terms of victims and vamps – a take off of the madonna/whore dichotomy. The victim and vamp discourses, I argue, are the performative enactments of a security state that operates according to a racialized logic of masculinist protection. I hold in tension the circulation of the victim/vamp discourses with the story of Paula, a Colombian woman who was caught trafficking heroin in hidden compartments of her suitcase. I use Paula's story to call attention to the political work in dismissing women as agents in the international drug trade.     

Women,conflict, and culture in former Yugoslavia

The civil war in the former Yugoslavia has taken a toll on the women's movement which has disintegrated across male-defined nationalist borders. The women's movement in this area got its start during the Second World War but was disbanded under communism until women's groups began to form in the 1970s. Today the women's movement has lost the power to oppose the war and has been unable to prevent widespread violence perpetuated against women. Some feminists who have refused to embrace nationalism and patriotism have been vilified and have had to seek refuge abroad. Recently, however, hundreds of nongovernmental organizations have been formed to provide support to women and children victimized by the war. Women have been raped and impregnated as a strategy of male warfare, and raped women who refused an abortion were ostracized. War-related rape has yet to be fully recognized as an international human rights violation, and the issue is being used as political propaganda in the former Yugoslavia while it is ignored elsewhere. Sensationalist reporting of these rapes has further victimized women and made them unable to give voice to their trauma. War also increases women's suffering by destroying economic and social welfare systems. Oxfam is helping women record their testimonies of war and reconstruct the fabric of their societies through programs which provide income-generation and training in micro-enterprises. In addition, Oxfam is strengthening electronic communication and networking among women's groups throughout the region.     

PARENTAL INFLUENCE ON GENDER AND MARITAL ROLE ATTITUDES: IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERVENTION

This study examined parental influence on specific attitudes toward marital and parental roles and nonspecific gender-role attitudes. Respondents included 173 young adults (127 women and 46 men) and their parents. Young adults' scores on the Role Orientation scale of the Marital Statisfaction Inventory and on masculinity and femininity scales from two self-report inventories (the MMPI-2 and the Personal Attributes Questionnarie) were correlated with their parents' scores on a subset of these same measures. Results indicated that (a) marital and parental role attitudes among young adults are strongly related to specific marital role attitudes of their parents but only modestly related (for women) or unrelated (for men) to nonspecific gender-role attitudes of their parents; (b) broader gender-role attitudes of young men are moderately correlated with their father's attitudes but generally uncorrelated with their mother's attitudes regarding gender roles; and (c) the relationship of young women's gender-role attitudes to both maternal and paternal attitudes is generally weaker and more complex than for young men. Clinical implications of these findings for assessment and intervention with distressed couples are discussed.     

Gender,domestic space,and urban upgrading: a case study from Amman

The author discusses an urban upgrading project in the Wadi and Jabal areas of central Amman. These two areas, home to Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 exoduses, are among the most congested and poor in the central city. The Wadi borders a refugee camp and the Jabal is surrounded by low-income neighborhoods. Through the upgrading project, the state asserted control over every facet of women's lives, addressing most aspects of private and public life in the targeted communities. Women responded in a rally around the notions of domesticity and femininity, effectively managing public agencies and personnel in such a manner that the project was eventually turned to their advantage. Sections consider women in the domestic environment, relationships between women across households, the urban upgrading project, planning to restructure social relations, blurring the private and the public, and women's responses.     

Gender and Tobacco in (Globalizing) Asia – Exorcizing the Ghosts of Dualistic Thought?

This paper investigates the intersections between tobacco, gender and globalizing Asia. I argue that binary tropes like modernity/westernization‐tradition and masculinity–femininity are incessantly invoked in a burgeoning tobacco‐control literature focused on Asia. This tends to reify discursive and material gendered smoking stereotypes, as well as their underlying asymmetrical power relations. Responding to this I chart out three ways in which dualistic gender ideologies can be rethought. Firstly, I attend to varieties within gender categories to account for more nuanced articulations of gender identities. I do this by demonstrating the co‐imbrication between polyvalent masculinities and smoking practices. Secondly, I am attuned to intersecting facets of smoking subjectivities – situated within a specific Asian cultural fabric – that complicate the easy conflation of masculinity with power, and femininity with disempowerment. Lastly, I contend that fleshing out the embodied aspects of gendered smoking practices can assist us in confounding polarized gender categories and their associated attributes. I conclude my paper with a discussion on the uneasy relationships between Asia, Westernization, gender and a possible move away from a Western‐centric dualistic thinking.     

‘Subjects,Participants, Collaborators’

Existing accounts of new war have not actively engaged with feminist analysis. Protest masculinity is suggested as an alternative explanatory framework to conventional explanations of violence in new war. To explore the intersection between masculinity and new wars the example of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front has been investigated. The article concludes that masculinity is an essential cause to the creation of new war and to the form that new war takes once it has originated.     

Sexuality,romantic orientation,and masculinity: Men as underrepresented in asexual and aromantic communities

This study examines men as a minority in asexual (experiencing low/no sexual attraction) and aromantic (experiencing low/no romantic attraction) communities. First, we situate our research in existing literature on asexuality, compulsory sexuality/compulsory romance, and hegemonic masculinities. In our analysis, we use survey data from the 2020 Asexual Community Survey (n = 4974) and 2020 Aromantic Census (n = 3018) to provide evidence that asexual and aromantic men are demographic minorities within asexual and aromantic communities. Next, we turn to two interview samples with 39 individuals who identify as aromantic and 77 individuals who identify as asexual. We analyzed these interviews to explore how sexuality and romance contribute to the construction of hegemonic masculinities. Our interviews reveal several important themes that highlight how asexual and aromantic men navigate their masculinity and identity amid asexual and aromantic communities as majority-woman spaces. We focus on three main themes: (1) masculinity as inherently sexual; (2) masculinity, heteronormativity, and the gendered construction of romance; and (3) asexual/aromantic identity, masculinity, and the split attraction model. Taken together, our results show how (hetero)sexuality and romantic relationship formation are fundamental to hegemonic masculinity. We find that asexual and aromantic men face cultural pressures and social stigma around initiating sex and performing romance. Asexual men must contend with managing a sexual identity that runs counter to men's supposedly innate sexual desire, thus situating them as inadequately masculine. Aromantic men, meanwhile, must manage inhabiting an identity that is conflated with the fuckboy/player trope, situating them as excessively masculine. This study demonstrates how centering asexual and aromantic perspectives reveals complexities in the ways hegemonic masculinity relies on participation in both sex and romance. We conclude by relating our findings to larger conversations on gender and sexualities as well as implications for future research on marginalized sexual identities.     

WHEN MEN ARE THE MINORITY: The Case of Men in Nursing

Based on in-depth interviews with a nonprobability sample of male nurses, this study argues that while male nurses do experience the interaction dynamics associated with tokenism as outlined by Kanter (1977a, 1977b), their experience is substantially different from that of female tokens because of socio-cultural factors that interact with group proportions in forming patterns of group interaction. Not only do male nurses react differently to the dynamics of visibility, polarization, and assimilation, but gender-related issues of status and stigma are also important to them. Although Kanter's framework is applicable to male nurses, many of the differences they experience compared to female tokens are attributable to socio-cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity as well as gender-based issues of status rather than group proportions alone. Thus, these findings suggest that socio-cultural factors, interacting with group proportions, strongly influence patterns of interaction among nurses.     

The Re-Creation Of Gender In A Male Workplace

This paper draws on participant observation in a male-dominated blue-collar job to understand how the concepts of masculinity and femininity are re-created through coworker interactions on the shopfloor and the effect of this on women. Men typecast women in these jobs as either feminine or unfeminine and treated them differently, but in both cases, women's presence was useful for defining–and in the case of sex-role appropriate women–enforcing masculinity. Such treatment isolated women from the on-going work culture and constrained them to certain behaviors.     

Between Representations and Subjectivity: Gender Binaries and the Politics of Organizational Transformation

The distinction between male and female and masculinity and femininity continues to polarize relations between the sexes in ways that generally subordinate, marginalize, or undermine women with respect to men. The gender literature has recently challenged the singular and unitary conception of gender identity, arguing that there are a multiplicity of masculinities and femininities that are often fragile, fragmented and fluid. Despite this, the binary relationship between men and women continues to obstruct the development of sexual equality. This article is concerned with focusing critically on this binary and, in particular, its association with hierarchy, where men dominate women and masculinity assigns to femininity a marginal or ‘Other’ inferior status. It suggests that hierarchy is a condition and consequence of the reification of the binary that is difficult to challenge from within a representational epistemology that continues to dominate even studies of gender, let alone social science more generally. Deconstructing the gender binary is simply to challenge the reification of the terms wherein the divisions between male and female, masculine and feminine or men and women are treated as absolute and unchanging. The article examines conceptions of masculinity and the debate between Foucauldian and anti‐Foucauldian feminists as a basis for developing its argument. It then concludes that gender analysis can only deconstruct the hierarchical content of the gender binary by disrupting masculine hegemony at work. One way of facilitating this is temporarily to occupy a space between representations of gender and the conditions of subjectivity and language that make them possible.     

Exploring the role of gender norms in nutrition and sexual health promotion in a piloted school-based intervention: The Philadelphia Ujima™ experience

Perceptions of masculinity and femininity influence behaviors and can be identified in young children and adolescents (Brannon, 2004). Thus, adolescents’ engagement in health risk or promoting behaviors is influenced by perceptions of masculinity and femininity and the differences in expectations, norms and responsibilities for girls and boys (WHO, 2007). Girls and boys have different needs, and gender-based interventions that consider similarities as well as differences are needed. A gender-based nutrition and sexual health promotion program was developed and piloted by the Philadelphia Ujima Coalition in a high school setting. To explore the gender differences in adolescents’ perceptions of the influence of gender norms on weight, nutrition, physical activity, and sexual health and the implication of these differences in future gender-integrated health promotion programming for youth, a content analysis of student and facilitator debriefing forms were implemented for the participating schools. The content analysis was used to identify central themes, concepts gained, and overall impact of the intervention sessions. Overall, gender norms influence healthy eating practices and activity through influencing perceptions of body type in adolescents. Gender norms also influence sexual activity and decision making through influencing perceptions of beauty, masculinity, femininity, pressures and popular concepts related to sexual activity. Thus, interventions that address gender may more effectively promote health and wellness in adolescents.     

Masculinity and male dominance

The problems with established sociological and socio-psychological conceptions of masculinity are discussed, and it is argued that object-relations theory can provide a clearer understanding of masculinity. An ideal type of the development of masculinity is built up in contrast to similar ideal types of human development and the development of femininity as portrayed by recent feminist writers. The status of the ideal type is then discussed, drawing out its implications for the relationship between psychoanalysis and sociological analysis, and for the nature of social change.     

An Intersectional Approach to Understanding Stigma Associated with Male Sexual Assault Victimization

Throughout popular media, there are stories about people being victimized because they are seen as different from the majority of people in society. Although there is a stigma aspect to these stories, the role that stigma plays in victimization is never truly examined. This paper uses an intersectional framework to discuss the role stigma plays in victimization. Through the discussion of male sexual assault victims, this paper sheds light on the varying construction of masculinity and how this meshes with the stigma process creating varying experiences for male victims. Issues associated with being a male victim of sexual assault are discussed, including a comparison with female victims and a discussion of how the construction of masculinity varies in different communities to illustrate how the experiences of male victims changes depending on their race, class, and sexuality. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how a better understanding of male sexual assault victims could provide needed assistance for them.