Call for Papers: Caring Masculinities at Work: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives across Europe
Feminist critique and gender research (Moss Kanter 1977, Hearn & Parkin 1987, Cockburn 1991, Acker 1992) demythologized the ‘bodyless worker’ and revealed androcentric patterns as well as men’s dominance in management and workplace cultures. While Connell (1995) confirmed this perspective, she shifted research to multiple masculinities competing and forming around hegemonic masculinity,
which are also at work (and contested) in organizations. Related approaches confirmed this plurality, focusing on men’s shifting attitudes – and sometimes practices – towards more open, egalitarian and care-oriented patterns (Fthenakis & Minsel, 2002; Holter, 2003; Puchert et al., 2005; Scholz & Heilmann, 2019). From the 1980s, European research investigated the gap between men’s attitudes
and practices regarding care and gender equality (Jalmert, 1984). Over the last decades, European research has shown empirical evidence of men’s increased activity in some areas of (un)paid care work and care jobs, while the care-gap remains and regional differences are significant (Scambor et al. 2014,
2019; EIGE data). Men’s care (for children, partners, elderly and sick, for friends, society, for their own emotions, health etc.) has sometimes been driven by more gender-equal attitudes, sometimes by circumstances and outside demands. The caring tendencies among have so far been more evident in private than in public, as a general tendency. The caring tendency is a broad pattern related to several
trends, including family orientation and gender roles, as well as increased gender equality. It occurs e g in a context of the economic shift from heavy industry and manufacturing to knowledge- and servicebased sectors as well as the policy developments aimed at supporting men’s caring roles. Since the mid-2000s, Caring Masculinity (CM) became a heuristic, normative-political concept and a research
paradigm (namely in EU-Research like Work Changes Gender, FOCUS, Culture of Care, Boys in Care, Men in Care, but also in studies like GEQ – Gender equality and quality of life study, etc.) with increasing global evidence (e.g. IMAGES – International Men and Gender Equality Survey). The European study The Role of Men in Gender Equality (31 countries) traced different forces for change
as well as barriers among men, including caring masculinities and gender equality policies. The concept was described as kind of alternative masculinity which involves “values derived from feminist ethics of care such as interdependence, support, empathy, attention and co-responsibility” (Hrženjak & Scambor, 2019). While Elliott (2015) describes CM as a gender-equality intervention, researchers have also noted that CM and gender equality don’t always overlap, and that family orientation and
gender roles are significant factors too (see Study on the Role of men in Gender Equality). This question becomes even more important in a context of the current pandemic that has intensified the debate on gender aspects of care. On the one hand, institutions seem to need new regulations and measures to enable their employees to combine work and care; on the other hand, the current
discourses surface a turn towards recognition and a broader meaning of care.