Care-Free Masculinities

Gender equality is widely regarded as a central value of Western societies. It is often contrasted with the more gender divided cultures both historically and contemporaneously. Present-day egalitarian values are founded on the liberal concept of equal opportunity and access without discrimination to various freedoms and resources widely available and valued in the public sphere. The objective of liberal equality of opportunity is not to eliminate inequalities altogether but to regulate competition to them so that differential outcomes are accepted as free and fair, but in practice there can be many conflicting and contradictory beliefs about what is free, fair, or equal (Baker 1987, 1999). Western welfare states are similar in so far as they contain gender inequalities in resources, opportunities for paid work, and responsibility for unpaid work, and in that they inadequately support caring. However, they vary in how they support combined paid work and motherhood, the extent and nature of inequalities among women, how they support different types of family forms, and support for women and families in poverty (Daly and Rake 2003: 153–5). The majority of the men in the study defined equality broadly in liberal terms but there was a spectrum of opinions: some held relatively radical views advocating a more equal distribution of resources while others, holding more conservative outlooks, opposing greater levels of equality in peoples’ lives.