Plural Masculinities – The Remaking of the Self in Private Life

Citation

Patterson, L. (2010), "Plural Masculinities – The Remaking of the Self in Private Life", Gender in Management, Vol. 25 No. 6, pp. 524-527. https://doi.org/10.1108/17542411011069927

Six pages in Connell's 1987 text Gender and Power are “the most widely cited source for the concept of hegemonic masculinity” (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 831). Portuguese sociologist Sofia Aboim certainly cites them, and in her new book, Plural Masculinities, simultaneously critiques, extends and expertly deploys her re‐figuring of Connell's most famous concept. Indeed, contrary to Connell's 1987 positioning of family life as “part of the periphery rather than the core complex” of “patriarchy”, Aboim demonstrates that within the “historically privatized contexts of reproduction and sexuality […] the key processes of domination occur, materially and discursively” (p. 61). Plural Masculinities explores “complicit masculinities” – masculinities enacted by “the large array of average, not so powerful or bluntly resistant men” (p. 38) – in the Portuguese context. But this book has much wider implications than understanding the particularities of the Portuguese gender order.

In Plural Masculinities Aboim presents an instructive example of how contemporary discourses of equality are reshaping men's identity claims in relation to fatherhood and heterosexuality. Drawing on three empirical studies, Aboim meticulously details exemplars of contemporary “new” hybrid (or at least generationally distinctive) and plural masculinities, and leads us to a rather sobering conclusion. That is, despite “a great deal of transformation […] taking place in gender relations” (p. 158), enduring relations of power have not been undermined.

Plural Masculinities is a book written with an academic audience in mind. Its structure mirrors that of a PhD thesis, perhaps unsurprising as it seems to be based on the author's PhD work. Readers unfamiliar or unsympathetic with the communicative idiosyncrasies of theses more generally may find this off‐putting. If so, this would be a great shame as this is a book that is definitely well‐worth reading.

Plural Masculinities begins with an interesting review of key challenges in theorising gender, identity and gender relations. Aboim focuses on the analytical shortcomings of category formation and binaries (traversing the shift in recent decades towards giving more theoretical attention to bricolage and pluralism) as well as the continuing tensions between material and cultural approaches to gender and power. Her aim here is not to solve some of the enduring problems of “theorising gender”, but rather to “share with the reader […] the conceptual difficulties” that “pervaded” her research (p. 34). These preliminary discussions are extended in Chapters 2 and 3, as Aboim overviews the shift in academic interest towards men as socially produced subjects and subsequent theoretical approaches to theorising masculinities. In Chapter 3, Aboim turns her attention to “family life”, and in particular reproduction and heterosexuality. In doing so, she argues the recent discursive shifts privileging the individual as the primary social “unit”, and “equality” as a cultural logic in the “private” as well as the “public” sphere, are generative of new tensions in gender relations, and gendered subjectivities more generally.

The remaining chapters present Aboim's empirical work. She begins by sketching the historical specificities of the Portuguese gender order, and in her first empirical investigation, the particularities of the transformation in the gendered division of labour following the overthrow the Portuguese dictatorship, the Estado Novo in 1974. The consolidation of modern Portugal during a period of leftish democratic government and its subsequent membership of the European Union which saw Portugal rapidly transform from a predominantly poor and rural society with a division of labour based in a traditional culture of gendered familism, into a modern European nation. After setting the historical context, Aboim uses a detailed cross‐national comparison with 17 other rich countries to compare attitudes concerning the ideal division of labour and the actual practices of how labour is divided. She shows that typically (that is, in many countries) the general expansion of the dual breadwinner model in the later twentieth century has not lead to general attitudinal support for the equal sharing of paid and unpaid work amongst couples, and that attitudes of support for equal sharing do not always lead to the actual sharing of paid and unpaid work in practice.

Through her cross‐national analysis, Aboim surfaces what appear to be some of the peculiarities of the Portuguese case. Unlike most countries in Aboim's sample, the presence of pre‐school children in a Portuguese household is not “highly predictive of the absence of a dual earner/dual career division of labour” (p. 195). Indeed, in Portugal (but not in most other countries) women have high rates of full‐time participation in paid work even when children are young. Importantly, this situation prevails despite the persistence of high levels of attitudinal support for the male breadwinner model as a family ideal, and the persistence of relatively strong negative attitudes towards mothers in paid work. It is this juxtaposition of the “traditional culture of gendered familism” (p. 95) with the practice of dual breadwinning that Aboim further investigates in two subsequent qualitative studies.

Aboim's qualitative research focuses on discourses of fatherhood and heterosexuality, respectively, and the potential of each for men in fashioning contemporary masculine identities. As in other rich countries, the increasing participation of women in paid work has coincided with discursive manifestations of a “new fatherhood”. Recent changes in Portugal certainly have demanded that men as fathers refashion their identities so they are more congruent with the “modern” expectation that men be emotionally engaged parents and be actively involved in the day‐to‐day activities of their children's lives. As Aboim notes, emotionality and expressiveness, “once the reserve of stereotypical femininity”, is now expected of men. However, if an “essential element of becoming masculine is not being feminine”, how might men's emotionality and expressiveness be enacted? Aboim shows a range of masculine paternal identities are now available to Portuguese men. What they share is the assertion of a break from the past. Portuguese men position themselves as different from their fathers. But rather than these new paternal masculinities emanating from, for example, political commitments to a fairer care regime, Aboim argues it is the major changes in modern adult intimacy and family life – privatization, sentimentalisation and individualization – have made possible the neutralisation and appropriation of what may have once been considered feminine. In effect, “the material and symbolic bases of masculinity” (p. 134) have changed, but relations of domination have not.

In her second qualitative investigation, Aboim explores men's discourses around sexuality and their sexual identities. Interviewing men from three generations (in short, “the grandfathers of the regime”, “the fathers of the revolution” and “the sons of Europe”) Aboim analyses men's talk about themselves as sexual actors. Here again Aboim points to significant changes in the fashioning of self identity, and especially the shift from “institutionalist norms to individualistic and hedonistic values” in relation to men's sexual activities and their representation by men of different ages and generations. Nevertheless, marriage remains positioned across the generations as the fulcrum between “natural” male sexuality and the socialised “family man”. And while the young “sons of Europe” use the language of equality to describe the plasticity of their sexual selves and their representation of women as their sexual equals, “nature” retains its explanatory power for categorically constructing “maternity” as different and exclusively feminine. Thus, as Aboim shows, “the ideology of gender equality has not completely undermined gender relations as relations of power, though it has changed the discursive justification for power” (p. 164).

Although Aboim investigates “local” masculinities, the implications of her work for understanding gender relations in other rich countries are highly significant. The details of the case described by Aboim may be Portuguese, but shift from one “gender order” (usually a gender differentiated “breadwinner – caregiver ideal”) to another (usually a variation of the apparently gender‐free dual worker practice) has occurred in many rich countries. These shifts have typically privileged the male worker norm, with women increasing their hours of paid work, while at the same time continuing to bear an unequal share of care (as time‐use researchers continue to show – see for example, Craig, 2007). In addition, pay inequities seem entrenched in many countries, irrespective of mechanisms for formal equality. Even in those few countries where paid work and care work is actually shared, the labour market remains highly segmented.

Aboim's book prompts one to consider how discourses of equality generate unequal practices, not only in our families but also in our workplaces. Has the gender order really been changed when men who take family leave are valorized, while women with children are still too involved with their family to be considered worthy of promotion? While discourses of equality have opened up new masculinities for men by neutralising practices once considered too feminine for them, those same practices enacted by women remain highly charged, both at work and at home. Plural and hegemonic indeed!