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Chapter Title: Masculinities: The Field of Knowledge
Chapter Author(s): Raewyn Connell
Book Title: Configuring Masculinity in Theory and Literary Practice
Book Editor(s): Stefan Horlacher
Published by: Brill. (2015)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv2gjwt1m.6
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MASCULINITIES: THE FIELD OF KNOWLEDGE
RAEWYN CONNELL
Abstract
In the last twenty-five years a body of international research on mas-
culinities has consolidated and important conclusions of this research
are as follows: there are multiple masculinities, there are hierarchies
of masculinities, often defining a hegemonic pattern for a given socie-
ty; masculinities are collective as well as individual; masculinities are
actively constructed in social life; masculinities are internally com-
plex; masculinities change throughout history. Certain masculinities
operate in global, not just local, arenas. We can trace this historically
through the phases of imperialism, colonialism, de-colonization, and
contemporary globalization. New masculinities are also emerging in
global business. At the same time, movements that aim to reform mas-
culinities have developed in many countries. While many men resist
change because of the dividend they get from patriarchal gender sys-
tems, there are also important motives for men to change their gender
practices. The article argues that such changes or reforms are most
likely to be successful when they emphasize social justice as well as
gender diversity or de-gendering.
Conceptualizing gender and masculinity
In the last four decades, there has been a huge growth of debate and
investigation on men as gendered beings, on questions about mascu-
linity. The main impulse for this was the women’s movement and its
problematization of gender. Most feminist research has, for good rea-
sons, focused on the lives of women. But gender is inherently rela-
tional. Even if our understanding of gender is no more than sex diffe-
rences, there must always be two terms in a difference.
© Raewyn Connell, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004299009_004
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40 Raewyn Connell
A closer look at gender shows the reality involves much more
complex patterns than simple difference. Gender is also about rela-
tionships of desire and power, and these must be examined from both
sides. In understanding gender inequalities it is essential to research
the more privileged group as well as the less privileged. For good
reasons, then, there has been a marked growth in gender-informed
research about men and masculinities, 1 which now comes from every
region of the world. 2
This project requires more than simply an examination of men as a
statistical category. It requires an examination of men’s gender prac-
tices; the ways the gender order defines, positions, empowers, and
constrains men; and the consequences of those definitions in culture
and in the lives of women. In short, it is necessary to study masculini-
ty.
By “masculinity” I mean the pattern or configuration of social
practices linked to the position of men in the gender order, and social-
ly distinguished from practices linked to the position of women. Mas-
culinity is not a pre-social category. Masculinity constantly refers to
male bodies (sometimes symbolically and indirectly), but is not de-
termined by male biology. One can, therefore, speak of masculine
women, and feminine men; of gender ambivalences and contradic-
tions. This is, indeed, an important theme in gender analysis, since the
days of Sigmund Freud.
An understanding of masculinity starts with the gender orders in
which masculinities are defined. There are different perspectives on
this question. Perhaps the most widespread in the social sciences and
in professional practices adopts the concept of “sex roles”. Sex role
theory explains gender patterns by appealing to the social customs that
define proper behavior for women and for men.
1
See Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities, eds Michael Kimmel, Jeff
Hearn and Raewyn Connell, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005.
2
See, for example, From Boys to Men: Social Constructions of Men in Contemporary
Society, eds Tamara Shefer et al., Lansdowne, South Africa: UCT Press, 2007; Mas-
culinidades y Globalización: Trabajo y Vida Privada, Familias y Sexualidades, ed.
José Olavarría, Santiago, Chile: Red de Masculinidad/es, Universidad Academia de
Humanismo Cristiano (UAHC) and Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo de la Mujer
(CEDEM), 2009; Xingkui Zhang, Studies of Men and Masculinities in Contemporary
China, PhD thesis, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney,
2010.
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Masculinities: The Field of Knowledge 41
Applied to men, the sex role approach emphasizes the way expec-
tations about proper masculine behavior are conveyed to boys as they
grow up, by parents, schools, mass media, and peer groups. This theo-
ry emphasizes the role models provided by sportsmen, military heroes,
etc.; and the social sanctions (from mild disapproval to violence) that
are applied to boys and men who do not live up to the role norms. This
is a plausible approach to some issues about masculinity. But sex role
theory has serious intellectual weaknesses. 3 It gives no grasp on issues
of power, violence, or material inequality. It misses the complexities
within femininity and masculinity, and it offers very limited strategies
of change.
Another widely used model of gender, which I call “categorical
theory”, treats women and men as pre-formed categories. In categori-
cal thinking about gender, the focus is on some relation between the
pre-determined categories – most often a relation of difference or ine-
quality. This is, for instance, the logical structure underlying most
discussions of gender equity policy, such as “Equal Opportunity” sta-
tistics contrasting men’s employment with women’s employment.
Compared with sex role theory, this approach more readily ad-
dresses issues of power. But categorical gender research too has diffi-
culty grasping the complexities of gender, such as gendered violence
within either of the two main categories. The categorical approach
leaves little space for the interplay of gender with class and race, and
misses such issues as the importance of unionism for working-class
women, or community organizing for indigenous women.
Categorical thinking, in the form of gender essentialism, was the
principal target of deconstructive gender theory and post-structuralist
approaches that locate gender in the realm of discourse. This became
the most popular approach to gender in the Anglophone academic
world of the global North, especially in fields such as the humanities
that normally deal with texts, documents and discourse. 4 A large body
of research now examines the discursive construction of masculinities
in literature, mass media, and other cultural forms.
This approach, enormously productive in some fields, has little
grip on others. It is not well suited to political economy, research on
institutions, or questions of social dynamics, including most of the
3
See Raewyn Connell, Gender and Power, Cambridge: Polity, 1987.
4
See Rachel Alsop, Annette Fitzsimons and Kathleen Lennon, Theorizing Gender: An
Introduction, Cambridge: Polity, 2002.
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42 Raewyn Connell
urgent problems of policy and practice that concern masculinity in the
developing world. 5 Researchers prioritizing fields such as these tend
to emphasize that gender issues always concern a structure of social
relations.
In a structural approach, gender is understood as a way in which
social practice is ordered. In gender processes, the everyday conduct
of life is organized in relation to a reproductive arena, defined by the
bodily structures and processes of human reproduction. This arena
includes sexual arousal and intercourse; childbirth and infant-care;
bodily sex difference, and similarity. I call this a “reproductive arena”
rather than a “biological basis” because biology does not determine
what happens. Rather, bodies are participants in a historical process as
both agents and objects of practice. 6
Social practice is creative and inventive, but not formless. As so-
cial beings, we act in response to particular situations, within definite
structures of social relations. Gender relations, the relations among
people and groups organized through the reproductive arena, form one
of the major structures of all documented societies. Practice that re-
lates to this structure, generated as people and groups grapple with
their historical situations, does not consist of isolated acts. Actions are
configured in larger units, and when we speak of “masculinity” and
“femininity” we are naming configurations of gender practice. Seen in
terms of change through time, masculinities and femininities are best
understood as gender projects, dynamic arrangements of social prac-
tice through time, in which we make ourselves and are made as par-
ticular kinds of human beings. 7
Understanding gender as a fundamentally historical phenomenon
means that we must understand gender, and masculinity, in their con-
nection with the most important historical change in modern world
history – the process of colonial expansion, conquest, resistance, and
the subsequent neocolonialism and postcolonial globalization. It is
increasingly recognized that these are crucial contexts for the making
of masculinities, both in the colonizing powers and among the colo-
5
See Men and Development: Politicizing Masculinities, eds Andrea Cornwall, Jerker
Edström and Alan Greig, London: Zed Books, 2011.
6
See Raewyn Connell and Rebecca Pearse, Gender: In World Perspective, 3rd edn,
Cambridge: Polity, 2014.
7
Raewyn Connell, Masculinities, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Polity, 2005.
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Masculinities: The Field of Knowledge 43
nized, and among the groups and movements and social struggles of
the postcolonial world. 8
Crucial research findings
Historians and anthropologists have shown that there is no one pattern
of masculinity that is found everywhere. Different cultures, and dif-
ferent periods of history, construct masculinity differently. Some cul-
tures regard homosexual sex as incompatible with true masculinity;
others think no one can be a real man without having had homosexual
relationships. Some cultures make heroes of soldiers, and regard vio-
lence as the ultimate test of masculinity; others look at soldiering with
disdain and regard violence as contemptible. The masculinities of east
Asia, for instance, have a different history and now exist in different
configurations from those of, say, North America. 9
It follows that in large-scale societies there are likely to be multiple
definitions of masculinity. Sociological research shows this to be true,
with differences of class, ethnicity and generation. Equally important,
more than one kind of masculinity can be found within a given cultu-
ral setting. Within any workplace, neighborhood or peer group, there
are likely to be different understandings of masculinity and different
ways of “doing” masculinity. Quite complex negotiations of the mean-
ings of masculinity occur in the flow of everyday life, as shown in
ethnographic research. 10
There are definite relationships between different patterns of mas-
culinity. Typically, some masculinities are more honored than others.
Some may be actively dishonored, for example homosexual masculin-
ities in modern Western culture. Some are socially marginalized, for
example the masculinities of disempowered ethnic minorities. Some
are exemplary, taken as symbolizing admired traits, for example the
masculinities of sporting heroes.
The form of masculinity which is culturally dominant in a given
setting is commonly called “hegemonic masculinity”.11 The idea of
8
See Changing Men in Southern Africa, ed. Robert Morrell, London: Zed Books,
2001.
9
See Kam Louie and Morris Low, Asian Masculinities: The Meaning and Practice of
Manhood in China and Japan, London: Routledge, 2003.
10
See Matthew Gutmann, The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996.
11
For debate on this concept, see Raewyn Connell and James W. Messerschmidt,
“Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept”, Gender and Society, XIX/6 (De-
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44 Raewyn Connell
hegemony signals a position of cultural authority and leadership, not
total dominance; other forms of masculinity persist alongside. The
hegemonic form need not be the most common form of masculinity. A
hegemonic masculinity is, however, likely to be highly visible. Hege-
monic masculinity is hegemonic not just in relation to other masculini-
ties, but in relation to the gender order as a whole. It is an expression
of the privilege men collectively have over women. The hierarchy of
masculinities is an expression of the unequal shares in that privilege
held by different groups of men.
The gender structures of a society define particular patterns of con-
duct as “masculine” and others as “feminine”. At one level, these pat-
terns characterize individuals. Thus we say that a particular man (or
woman) is masculine, or behaves in a masculine way. But these pat-
terns also exist at the collective level. Masculinities are defined and
sustained in institutions such as corporations, armies, and govern-
ments or schools. Masculinities are defined collectively in the work-
place, as shown in industrial research; and in informal groups like
street gangs, as shown in criminological research.
Masculinity also exists impersonally in culture. Video games, for
instance, not only circulate stereotyped images of violent masculinity.
They require the player to enact this masculinity (symbolically) in
order to play the game at all. Sociological research on sport has shown
how an aggressive masculinity is created organizationally by the
structure of organized sport, by its pattern of competition, its system
of training, and its steep hierarchy of levels and rewards. 12 Images of
this masculinity are circulated on an enormous scale by sports media,
though most individuals fit very imperfectly into the cultural slots thus
created.
Masculinities do not exist prior to social behavior, either as bodily
states or fixed personalities. Rather, masculinities come into existence
as people act. They are accomplished in everyday conduct or organi-
zational life, as patterns of social practice. Close-focus research has
cember 2005), 829-59; Richard Howson, Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity, Lon-
don: Routledge, 2006; Christine Beasley, “Problematizing Contemporary Men/Mas-
culinities Theorizing: The Contribution of Raewyn Connell and Conceptual-Termi-
nological Tensions Today”, British Journal of Sociology, LXIII/4 (December 2012),
747-65.
12
See Michael A. Messner, Out of Play: Critical Essays on Gender and Sport, Alba-
ny: State University of New York Press, 2007.
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Masculinities: The Field of Knowledge 45
shown how we “do gender” in everyday life. 13 A similar insight has
thrown new light on the link between masculinity and crime. This is
not a product of a fixed masculine character being expressed through
crime. Rather, the link results from a variety of men from impove-
rished youth gangs on the street to white-collar criminals at the com-
puter using crime as a resource to construct particular masculinities. 14
A great deal of effort can go into the making of masculinities, heg-
emonic or non-hegemonic. Research on homosexual men’s lives
shows that for these men too, identity and relationships involve a
complex and sustained effort of construction.15 One reason why mas-
culinities are not fixed is that they are not simple, homogenous pat-
terns. Close-focus research on gender often reveals contradictory de-
sires and logics. A man’s active heterosexuality may exist as a thin
emotional layer concealing a deeper homosexual desire. A boy’s iden-
tification with men may co-exist or struggle with identifications with
women. The public enactment of an exemplary masculinity may cov-
ertly require actions which undermine it. The complexity of desires,
emotions or possibilities may not be obvious at first glance. But the
issue is important, because these complexities are sources of tension
and change in gender patterns. 16
From the fact that different masculinities exist in different cultures
and historical epochs, we can deduce that masculinities are able to
change. To speak of the “dynamics” of masculinity is to acknowledge
that particular masculinities are composed, historically, and may also
be de-composed, contested, and replaced. There is an active politics of
gender in everyday life. Sometimes it finds public expression, more
often it is local and limited. But there is always a process of contesta-
tion and change; and in some cases this becomes conscious and delib-
erate. This has happened, for instance, in the “men’s movements” of
North America in the 1980s and 1990s. 17
13
See Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Inequality, Power, and Institutional Change,
eds Sarah Fenstermaker and Candace West, New York: Routledge, 2002.
14
See James W. Messerschmidt, Masculinities and Crime: Critique and Reconceptu-
alization of Theory, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993.
15
See Gary Wayne Dowsett, Practicing Desire: Homosexual Sex in the Era of AIDS,
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.
16
See Connell, Masculinities.
17
See Michael A. Messner, The Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements, Thou-
sand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997.
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46 Raewyn Connell
Masculinities and world arenas
The social sciences and humanities have given increasing attention to
globalization, and the field of gender studies is no exception. 18 To
understand the relationship between globalization and the formation of
masculinities we have to start with the history of colonialism and the
structures of empire. Colonization itself was mostly carried out by a
workforce of men, and had a profound effect on gender orders among
the colonized. As the imperial social order stabilized, it created a hier-
archy of masculinities, as it created a hierarchy of communities and
races. The colonizers distinguished “more manly” from “less manly”
groups among their subjects. In British India, for instance, Bengali
men were supposed effeminate, while Pathans and Sikhs were regard-
ed as strong and warlike.
At the same time, the emerging imagery of gender difference in
European culture provided general symbols of superiority and inferi-
ority. In the colonizer’s mind, the conqueror was virile, while the col-
onized were dirty and sexualized, or effeminate, or childlike. In many
colonial situations indigenous men were called “boys” by the coloniz-
ers. In the late nineteenth century, racial barriers in colonial societies
were hardening rather than weakening, and gender ideology tended to
fuse with racism in forms that the twentieth century has never untan-
gled.
The power relations of empire meant that indigenous gender orders
were generally under pressure from the colonizers, rather than the
other way around. But the colonizers too might change. The barriers
of late colonial racism were not only to prevent pollution from below,
but also to forestall “going native”, a well-recognized possibility. The
pressures, opportunities, and profits of empire might also create
changes in gender arrangements among the colonizers. For instance
the work of married women changed in households with a large sup-
ply of indigenous workers as domestic servants. Empire might also
affect the gender order of the metropole itself: through changing gen-
der ideologies, divisions of labor, and the nature of the metropolitan
state. For instance, empire figured prominently as a source of mascu-
line imagery in Britain, in the Boy Scouts, and in the cult of “Law-
rence of Arabia” as a national hero.
18
See Esther Ngan-ling Chow, “Gender Matters: Studying Globalization and Social
Change in the 21st Century”, International Sociology, XVIII/3 (September 2003),
443-60.
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Masculinities: The Field of Knowledge 47
The world of empire created two very different settings for the
modernization of masculinities. In the periphery, the forcible restruc-
turing of economies and workforces tended to individualize social
relations and rationalize economies. The specific form of masculinity
might be local; for instance the Japanese “salary man”, a social type
first recognized in the first decade of the twentieth century, was spe-
cific to the Japanese context of large, stable industrial conglomerates.
The result generally was middle-class masculinities defined around
economic action and increasingly adapted to emerging market econo-
mies. But in recent years this pattern has come under increasing pres-
sure and demands for change. 19
In the metropole, the accumulation of wealth made possible a spe-
cialization of leadership in the dominant classes. Struggles for hegem-
ony followed, in which masculinities organized around domination or
violence were split from masculinities organized around expertise.
Political contests between Fascism and liberalism, between “hard-
liners” and “soft-liners”, showed these divisions. In the context of
both first-wave and second-wave feminism, reform movements ap-
peared, including the temperance movement, companionate marriage,
and homosexual rights movements, leading eventually to the pursuit
of androgyny in “men’s liberation” in the Seventies. Not all recon-
structions of masculinity, however, emphasized tolerance. The vehe-
ment masculinity politics of fascism, for instance, emphasized both
dominance and difference, 20 a pattern still found in contemporary rac-
ist movements.
The process of de-colonization disrupted the gender hierarchies of
the colonial order. Some activists and theorists of liberation struggles
celebrated masculine violence, as a necessary response to colonial
violence and emasculation: women in liberation struggles were less
impressed. 21 However one evaluates the process, one of the conse-
quences of de-colonization was further disruption of community-
19
See Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman
Doxa, eds James E. Roberson and Nobue Suzuki, London: Routledge, 2003.
20
See Männlichkeitskonstruktionen im Nationalsozialismus, eds Anette Dietrich and
Ljiljana Heise, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013.
21
See Amina Mama, “Sheroes and Villains: Conceptualizing Colonial and Contempo-
rary Violence against Women in Africa”, in Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies,
Democratic Futures, eds M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, New
York: Routledge, 1997, 46-62.
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48 Raewyn Connell
based gender orders, and another step in the re-orientation of mascu-
linities towards national and international contexts.
With the collapse of Soviet Communism, the decline of post-
colonial Socialism, and the ascendancy of the new right in Europe and
North America, world politics is more and more organized around the
needs of transnational capital and the creation of global markets. The
neo-liberal agenda has little to say, explicitly, about gender. It speaks
a gender-neutral language of “markets”, “individuals”, and “choice”.
But the world in which neo-liberalism is ascendant is still a gendered
world, and neo-liberalism has an implicit gender politics.
The individual of neo-liberal theory has the attributes and interests
of a male entrepreneur. The attack on the welfare state usually weak-
ens the position of women, while the increasingly unregulated power
of transnational corporations places strategic power in the hands of
particular groups of men. It is not surprising, then, that the installation
of capitalism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has been
accompanied by a reassertion of dominating masculinities, a trend that
has been turned to advantage by Vladimir Putin.
Among the business executives who operate in global markets, the
owners of big capital, and the political executives who interact (and in
many contexts merge) with them, we are likely to see the hegemonic
masculinities of contemporary globalization. Among the very rich, a
defensive masculinity, produced by a conscious toughening education
and marked by distrust, seems to prevail. 22 Among executives, we are
more likely to see a masculinity marked by increasing egocentrism,
conditional loyalties (even to the corporation), and a declining sense
of responsibility for others, seen in neoliberal attacks on welfare recip-
ients and the public sector. Management textbooks portray the manag-
er as a person with no permanent commitments, except (in effect) to
the idea of accumulation itself. Contemporary corporate masculinity
differs from traditional bourgeois masculinity by its increasingly liber-
tarian sexuality, with a growing tendency to commodify relations with
women. In many parts of the world there is a well-developed high-
level prostitution industry catering for international businessmen.
Corporate masculinity does not require bodily force, since the wealth
on which it rests is accumulated by impersonal, institutional means.
But corporations increasingly use the exemplary bodies of elite
22
See Mike Donaldson and Scott Poynting, Ruling Class Men: Money, Sex, Power,
Bern: Peter Lang, 2007.
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Masculinities: The Field of Knowledge 49
sportsmen as a marketing tool (note the phenomenal growth of the
corporate sponsorship of sport), and indirectly as a means of legitima-
tion for the whole gender order.
Changing masculinities
In the days of the small but active Men’s Liberation movement in the
1970s, it was assumed that feminism was good for men, because men
too suffered from rigid sex roles. As women broke out of their sex
role, men would be enabled to break out of theirs, and would have
fuller, better, and healthier lives as a result.
Few men actually followed this path, at least in the short term.
Men’s dominant position in the gender order has a material pay-off,
which I call the “patriarchal dividend” for men, and this dividend is
not withering away. The gender segregation of the workforce in the
rich countries has declined little in recent years. Men’s representation
in parliaments worldwide has risen, not fallen, over the last five years.
As corporations have gone multinational under the aegis of transna-
tional business masculinity they have increasingly escaped the nation-
al-level political structures through which women press for gender
equality. International industries such as garment manufacturing and
microprocessor assembly are arenas of rampant sexism. Violence
against women has not measurably declined.
What might change men’s attachment to a patriarchal society?
There are several possibilities. First, the appeal of justice itself; men
can support change simply because they believe it is right. Statements
of human rights, however often they are evaded, do have some force
in the long run. Second, though men in general gain the patriarchal
dividend, specific groups of men gain very little of it. For instance,
working-class youth, economically dispossessed by structural unem-
ployment, may gain no economic advantage at all over the women in
their communities. Other groups of men pay a price, alongside wom-
en, for the maintenance of an unequal gender order. Gay men are fre-
quently made targets of prejudice and violence, and effeminate men
are constantly abused. Indigenous men often experience extremely
high rates of unemployment and imprisonment.
Third, men have interests which are not purely egotistic. Most men
have relational interests that they share with particular women. Men’s
lives frequently involve dense networks of relationships with women:
with mothers, wives, partners, sisters, daughters, aunts, grandmothers,
friends, workmates, and neighbors. Each of these relationships can be
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50 Raewyn Connell
the basis for men’s relational interest in reform. For instance, a father
has an interest in his daughter being free of sexual harassment at
school, in her having access to education and training, in her growing
up a confident and autonomous person.
Which of these interests is actually pursued by particular men is a
matter of politics in the quite familiar sense, of organizing in the pur-
suit of programs. A complex terrain of masculinity politics has
emerged in the last generation, which as Messner observes, involves
conflicting agendas of change. 23 It involves a variety of rhetorics and
political strategies, visible in comparative studies. 24 In the Nordic
countries, for instance, changes in state policy have been crucial in
masculinity politics, such as the funding of paternity leave for new
fathers, the famous “father’s month”. 25 A crucial fact is that progres-
sive masculinity politics, together with masculinity research, have
now emerged in all regions of the world, from Latin America 26 to
south Asia. 27
This has provided a basis for global initiatives. One of these was
undertaken by UNESCO, an attempt to consolidate knowledge about
masculinities, violence and peacemaking. 28 A second was an initiative
through the United Nations secretariat, leading to the first worldwide
policy document about these issues, the Agreed Conclusions of the
2004 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women on “The
Role of Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality”. 29 A third is the
recent creation of a global network of NGOs and other agencies con-
cerned with change among men, MenEngage.
23
See Messner, The Politics of Masculinities.
24
See Bob Pease and Keith Pringle, A Man’s World? Changing Men’s Practices in a
Globalized World, London: Zed Books, 2006.
25
See Oeystein Gullvag Holter, Can Men Do It? Men and Gender Equality – the
Nordic Experience, Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2003.
26
See Masculinidades y equidad de genero en America Latina, eds Teresa Valdés and
José Olavarría, Santiago, Chile: FLACSO-Chile, United Nations Fund for Publication
Activities (UNFPA), 1998.
27
See Reframing Masculinities: Narrating the Supportive Practices of Men, ed.
Radhika Chopra, New Delhi: Orient Longman Private, 2007.
28
Male Roles, Masculinities and Violence, eds Ingeborg Breines, R.W. Connell and
Ingrid Eide, Paris: UNESCO, 2000.
29
James Lang, Alan Greig and Raewyn Connell, in collaboration with the Division
for the Advancement of Women, “The Role of Men and Boys in Achieving Gender
Equality”, Women 2000 and Beyond series, New York: United Nations Division for
the Advancement of Women / Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2008:
http.www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/w2000.html.
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Masculinities: The Field of Knowledge 51
Gender relations involve different spheres of practice, as well as
different geographies, so there is an unavoidable complexity in gender
politics. The days of simple solutions are long past. As reform agen-
das develop around the world, 30 the field of knowledge will be ex-
tended and its value, already evident in scientific terms, will be tested
more and more in practice. 31
30
See Chopra, Reframing Masculinities; Men and Gender Equality: Towards Pro-
gressive Policies, eds Jouni Varanka, Antti Närhinen and Reetta Siukola, Helsinki:
Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, 2006; Lang, Greig and Connell, “The Role of
Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality”.
31
This article draws on the framework proposed in my book Masculinities, and on my
contribution, “Gender, Men and Masculinities”, to Quality of Human Resources:
Gender and Indigenous Peoples, ed. Eleanora Barbieri-Masini, Encyclopedia of Life
Support Systems, I, UNESCO, 2009, 140-55. I am grateful to the many people who
have offered criticisms and extensions to the argument of Masculinities; the real
development of social-scientific knowledge is a collective work.
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