Care in Masculinities Studies

Prevailing images of masculinity are equated with power, physical strength, aggression, toughness and resilience, whilst prevailing images of femininity are associated with sexuality, emotion, nurture, sensitivity, compassion, and care. These antagonistic, binary representations (De Beauvoir 1949) have implications for the way gender is constructed as oppositional, and they can overlook the extensive variability of gender in social life. Just how inflexible or malleable gender has become, and to what extent gender equality has been achieved, remains a major topic in gender studies (Ranson 2001; Segal 2007; Delamont 2001). Unquestionably gender relations have been subject to considerable change in much of the Western world over the past fifty years. This was certainly true in the Ireland of my youth, during the 1970s and 80s where I grew up. Within the context of a sustained economic depression, and a desire to embrace social, political, and economic liberalism, Irish society began shaking off much of its conservative patriarchal heritage. The conservative gender order was undermined by increasing secularisation and the decline of the power and influence of Roman Catholicism (Inglis 2007, 1998a, 1998b). The women’s movement in particular was at the forefront in battling for equal rights to contraception, abortion and divorce, to services for abused women, to childcare and children’s rights, and to antidiscrimination protection in the workplace (Bacik 2004). Women in Ireland have caught up on men in many domains of social life especially in education and workplace participation and by international standards Ireland fairs favourably among the leading countries globally (Hausmann, Tyson, and Zahidi 2011).