To speak of masculinities is to speak about gender
relations. Masculinities are not equivalent to men; they concern the position of men in a gender order. They can be defined as the patterns of practice
by which people (both men and women, though predominantly men) engage that
position.
There is abundant evidence that masculinities are multiple, with internal complexities and even contradictions; also that masculinities change in history, and that women have a considerable role in making them, in interaction with boys and men.
I have been an interested observer of masculinities all my life, but began to think of this as a researchable issue in the late 1970s. At that time, anyone interested in power structures could see that the feminist challenge to patriarchy must mean changes in the lives of men.
A research project on secondary schools, described in the Education section, crystallized this idea. Interviewing boys, teachers and parents, we could see active hierarchies of masculinity in school settings. The term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ was first used in a 1982 report from this project, and my first essay on men and masculinities was published in the same year.
I managed to get funding for a study of social theories of
gender. The research assistant job was taken as a job-share by John Lee
and Tim Carrigan, both knowledgeable about gay theory and politics. We
were soon developing a synthesis of ideas about masculinity from
psychoanalysis, feminist theory, gay theory, and structural sociology. This was
published in 1985 in a long article, 'Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity', that appeared just as a wave of interest in
questions about men and masculinity was building up
internationally. Our paper was widely cited, several times
reprinted and translated, and was seen as a founding text of ‘the new men’s
studies’.
I didn’t think of it that way. My theoretical concern was the gender order as a whole; masculinity was one piece of the jigsaw. As an empirical researcher, I was very conscious of the thin base of evidence on which all discussions of masculinities rested at that time. So I set up a fieldwork project, which was denounced by a right-wing group in federal parliament, before it even began.
The project turned out well, with a series of papers that described the dynamics of masculinities in different social settings. Eventually this became the core of the book Masculinities. I had been reluctant to write such a book, as I thought the genre of ‘Books About Men’ – astonishingly popular in the early 1990s – fostered the illusion of one fixed natural masculinity. When I did start writing, the draft was promptly rejected by a well-known US publisher.
Other publishers kindly launched the book in 1995, and it seemed to meet a need. It has been very widely cited, translated into six other languages, and went into a second edition in 2005. It is in fact my best-known work, and I am charmed that it is cited in places as diverse as Voprosi Filosofii (Problems of Philosophy), the Shakespeare Quarterly, and Social Science & Medicine.
Social research on masculinities had obvious implications for practical problems, including violence prevention, the education of boys, action on men’s health, and the promotion of gender equality. With different groups of colleagues, I have written reports and papers that gather the research findings and concepts together to help activists and policy makers in all of those fields. A number were collected in The Men and the Boys.
The most ambitious project came in 2003-04, when I worked with United Nations agencies to survey research and prepare policy ideas on 'the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality'. This led up to a policy document adopted at a meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, in New York. It was fascinating to see the diplomats in their natural habitat, and to see other bureaucracies in action. It is hard to know how much influence such documents have. But there have been more efforts to create international projects concerned with changing masculinities and improving gender relations. I have given some help to a project in South-east Asia on engaging men in violence reduction. The interview below was done at a meeting of this project.
Work with the United Nations made me think harder about the international dimension in masculinity research. In 1998 I published a conceptual paper on ‘Masculinities and globalization’, that suggested new patterns of masculinity might be emerging in transnational spaces. This needed empirical testing, and in more recent work I have been exploring managerial masculinities in the global economy, with colleagues in Chile and Japan, José Olavarría and Futoshi Taga.
By now the theoretical framework from the 1980s had become a bit ragged. The idea of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ in particular had been fiercely debated. I re-evaluated this concept in 2005 in a joint paper with James Messerschmidt in the United States, which has been very widely cited.
There is abundant evidence that masculinities are multiple, with internal complexities and even contradictions; also that masculinities change in history, and that women have a considerable role in making them, in interaction with boys and men.
I have been an interested observer of masculinities all my life, but began to think of this as a researchable issue in the late 1970s. At that time, anyone interested in power structures could see that the feminist challenge to patriarchy must mean changes in the lives of men.
A research project on secondary schools, described in the Education section, crystallized this idea. Interviewing boys, teachers and parents, we could see active hierarchies of masculinity in school settings. The term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ was first used in a 1982 report from this project, and my first essay on men and masculinities was published in the same year.
I managed to get funding for a study of social theories of
gender. The research assistant job was taken as a job-share by John Lee
and Tim Carrigan, both knowledgeable about gay theory and politics. We
were soon developing a synthesis of ideas about masculinity from
psychoanalysis, feminist theory, gay theory, and structural sociology. This was
published in 1985 in a long article, 'Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity', that appeared just as a wave of interest in
questions about men and masculinity was building up
internationally. Our paper was widely cited, several times
reprinted and translated, and was seen as a founding text of ‘the new men’s
studies’.I didn’t think of it that way. My theoretical concern was the gender order as a whole; masculinity was one piece of the jigsaw. As an empirical researcher, I was very conscious of the thin base of evidence on which all discussions of masculinities rested at that time. So I set up a fieldwork project, which was denounced by a right-wing group in federal parliament, before it even began.
The project turned out well, with a series of papers that described the dynamics of masculinities in different social settings. Eventually this became the core of the book Masculinities. I had been reluctant to write such a book, as I thought the genre of ‘Books About Men’ – astonishingly popular in the early 1990s – fostered the illusion of one fixed natural masculinity. When I did start writing, the draft was promptly rejected by a well-known US publisher.
Other publishers kindly launched the book in 1995, and it seemed to meet a need. It has been very widely cited, translated into six other languages, and went into a second edition in 2005. It is in fact my best-known work, and I am charmed that it is cited in places as diverse as Voprosi Filosofii (Problems of Philosophy), the Shakespeare Quarterly, and Social Science & Medicine.
Social research on masculinities had obvious implications for practical problems, including violence prevention, the education of boys, action on men’s health, and the promotion of gender equality. With different groups of colleagues, I have written reports and papers that gather the research findings and concepts together to help activists and policy makers in all of those fields. A number were collected in The Men and the Boys.
The most ambitious project came in 2003-04, when I worked with United Nations agencies to survey research and prepare policy ideas on 'the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality'. This led up to a policy document adopted at a meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, in New York. It was fascinating to see the diplomats in their natural habitat, and to see other bureaucracies in action. It is hard to know how much influence such documents have. But there have been more efforts to create international projects concerned with changing masculinities and improving gender relations. I have given some help to a project in South-east Asia on engaging men in violence reduction. The interview below was done at a meeting of this project.
Work with the United Nations made me think harder about the international dimension in masculinity research. In 1998 I published a conceptual paper on ‘Masculinities and globalization’, that suggested new patterns of masculinity might be emerging in transnational spaces. This needed empirical testing, and in more recent work I have been exploring managerial masculinities in the global economy, with colleagues in Chile and Japan, José Olavarría and Futoshi Taga.
By now the theoretical framework from the 1980s had become a bit ragged. The idea of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ in particular had been fiercely debated. I re-evaluated this concept in 2005 in a joint paper with James Messerschmidt in the United States, which has been very widely cited.
This work was still centred on ideas and debates from the
global North. At the same time I was
becoming concerned with coloniality and the marginalization of intellectual
work from the global South. Recently I
have been trying to re-think issues about masculinity in the light of Southern
theory and post-colonial research, as familiar issues in rich countries may
look very different in world perspective.
A SELECTION OF TEN
Connell, Raewyn. 2014. Margin becoming centre: for a world-centred rethinking of masculinities. NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, vol. 9 no. 4, 217-231.
Most of the international literature on gender and masculinity uses conceptual frameworks derived from the global North. This paper discusses the significance of coloniality, the global archive on masculinities, and Southern perspectives on issues about men and masculinities.
Connell, Raewyn. 2010. Im Innern des gläsernen Turms: Die Konstruktion von Männlichkeiten im Finanzkapital Feministische Studien, vol. 28 no. 1, 8-24. English version: Inside the glass tower: the construction of masculinities in finance capital. Pp. 65-79 in Paula McDonald and Emma Jeanes, ed., Men, Wage Work and Family, New York & London, Routledge, 2012.
Report from the new life-history research on corporate masculinities,
published in a leading German journal; even in the finance industry, the
heartland of the new capitalism, there is a strong pattern of gender hierarchy.
Connell, Raewyn and James W.
Messerschmidt. 2005. Hegemonic masculinity: rethinking the concept. Gender
and Society, vol. 19 no. 6, 829-859.
A history of the concept and its uses, a review of the debates around
it, and an attempt to re-state it in a more precise way. Widely cited in recent
years; the concept is still useful, it seems.
Connell, Raewyn. 2005. Change among the
gatekeepers: men, masculinities, and gender equality in the global arena. Signs,
vol. 30 no. 3, 1801-1825.
Based on work done for the United Nations, argues the necessity of
including men and boys in gender equity policy, explores the problems of doing
so, and relates the practical issues to the research findings about masculinities.
Connell, Raewyn. 2000. The Men
and the Boys. Sydney,
Allen & Unwin; Cambridge, Polity Press; Berkeley, University of California
Press.
A collection of essays and papers, exploring globalization, policy
studies on education, health, etc., and some more life-history data from
Australia.
Connell, R, T Schofield, L Walker, J
Wood, D L Butland, J Fisher, J Bowyer. 1999. Men's Health: A Research Agenda and Background Report. Report published
by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care. Canberra,
Commonwealth of Australia.
Policy research, pure and simple: a comprehensive survey of the
available Australian research bearing on men’s health, and its implications for
policymaking. The differing situations of different groups of men (for
instance in workplaces, in class background, in sexuality) are a key to good
health policy.
Connell, Raewyn. 1996. Teaching the boys:
new research on masculinity, and gender strategies for schools. Teachers
College Record, vol. 98 no. 2, 206-235.
My attempt to work out the implications of the new masculinity research
for understanding gender relations in schools and planning good educational
practice; proposed the idea of ‘vortices’ or sites of intense masculinizing
practices, such as discipline systems and school sport.
Connell, Raewyn. 1995. Masculinities. Cambridge, Polity Press;
Sydney, Allen & Unwin; Berkeley, University of California Press.
Second edition, 2005.
A critical survey of Northern thinking about masculinity, a theoretical
framework, reports on interviews with four groups of men, reflections on the
history of masculinities, and a discussion of masculinity politics.
Translations: Italian, German, Swedish, Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew.
Connell, Raewyn. 1992. A very straight
gay: masculinity, homosexual experience and the dynamics of gender. American
Sociological Review, vol. 57 no. 6, 735-751.
Report of a set of life-history interviews, showing the complexities of
Sydney gay men’s relationships with conventional masculinity, and the varying
ways they negotiated the gender order.
Connell, Raewyn. 1990. An iron man: the
body and some contradictions of hegemonic masculinity. In M. Messner and D.
Sabo, ed., Sport, Men and the Gender Order, Champaign, Human Kinetics
Books, 83-95.
For a long time, this was the only individual case study of masculinity
I published. It explored the life of a surf sports champion, and showed
how difficult an exemplary masculinity was to sustain in everyday practice; it
also had interesting material on embodiment.
Carrigan, T, Raewyn Connell and J Lee.
1985. Toward a new
sociology of masculinity.
Theory and Society, vol. 14 no. 5,
551-604.
A critique of ‘male role’ literature and Books About Men, and an outline
of a new theoretical framework, this paper helped establish the idea that there
are multiple masculinities, and that the power relations of gender operate
between groups of men as well as between men and women.
