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Men maintain advantages in “women's” professions in large part because masculinity retains higher status than femininity even in feminized jobs mostly filled by women. Thus, men in these jobs tend to perform masculinity in very traditional ways, and are generally rewarded with increased access to higher-status positions, often with the cooperation and approval of their women coworkers. Yet much of the research in this area has neglected to explore how race intersects with gender to shape the ways men perform masculinity when they are employed in professions where they do “women's work.” How do men of color perform masculinity in female-dominated jobs? Are they able to engage in the expressions of masculinity documented among their white counterparts? Based on semi-structured interviews with black men nurses, I argue that these men encounter gendered racism from colleagues, supervisors, and customers that impacts the ways they construct and perform masculinity.

This chapter provides a critical focus on the relationship between masculinities and widespread forms of interpersonal violence. The chapter begins by discussing the contribution of second wave feminist criminology in securing disciplinary attention to the study of gender and its relation to crime, and how the growth and maturation of theory and research on specific masculinities and crime followed logically from this feminist work. As part of this development, examination of masculine perpetrated violence initially commenced with Messerschmidt’s (1993) influential account of masculinities and crime in his book of the same name, and was further expanded through a range of historical and contemporary criminological studies on masculinities and interpersonal violence. The authors discuss the origins and history of critical masculinities theory, its relation to social understandings of interpersonal violence, and how these have shaped criminological research interest and findings. Masculinities are linked intricately with struggles for social power that occur between men and women and among different men, but they vary and intersect importantly with other dimensions of inequality. The authors utilise this conception of masculinities to discuss research on various forms of interpersonal violence, from men’s physical and sexual violence against girls and women, attacks on sexual minorities, violence between/among boys and men, and to the ambiguities of gender, sexualities, and violence by girls, women and men.

This paper explores masculinity ideologies which influence family perspectives, and therefore, instigate mental distress among Black and White men between the ages of 18–30.

Using a grounded theory approach, 30 in-depth interviews were conducted to explore the social construction of masculinity and investigate the ways in which gender ideologies influence family gender roles.

Black men’s gender ideology was influenced by racial identity and stressed a communal and collaborative identity which can be seen by the reliance on religion and maintaining family financial stability. White employed a pragmatic, individual perspective that emphasized individual behavior in a changing society. They embraced evolving discourses necessary to cope with changing family structure and refocused attention from family of origin conflict.

Though this is a qualitative study, it does provide a starting point for further research on how the family roles of Black and White men affect their mental health.

Few studies have employed a racial comparison research design to investigate mental distress associated with gender ideologies. The paper suggests that moving forward will require, as Black men suggested, adopting a critical racial sociology of gender that emphasizes processes and social structure. Analyzing manhood acts through the lens of social marginality, identity work to claim membership in the male group, and the identification of characteristics to maintain male privileges vis-à-vis women may prove to be useful. Focusing on process allows an exploration of social forces that influence masculinity, gendered household ideologies, and mental health.

This interpretive ethnographic research explores the relationship between leadership and masculinities in an entrepreneurial team context. The team is situated in a higher education (HE) environment in the northeast of England, where its members develop startups while studying for a degree in entrepreneurial business management. The chapter contributes to entrepreneurship and leadership literature with a conceptual basis for understanding the links between gender and leadership in an entrepreneurial team in a way that transcends binaries, by focusing on masculinities as plural and nuanced, and on leadership as shared and mutual. The 13 young male entrepreneurs’ performances of gender and leadership are captured through nine audio-recorded observations. The thematic analysis of the data using a Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) framework reveals that young male entrepreneurs lead and relate to each other in assertive, supportive, and participative ways with assertive leadership behaviors linked to hegemonic masculinities and the latter two ways to inclusive masculinities. Those gender and leadership constructions are embodied, nuanced, plural, and shared in the situated entrepreneurial community. We recommend that new educational programs, developing leadership and/or entrepreneurship, need to be sensitive to local contexts, and should take account of plurality and nuances of doing gender and leadership in particular localities.

This chapter sets out to examine the role of masculinity in the development of a gendered organizational culture over time. The development of images of masculinity within one company—British Airways—is examined through content analysis of company newsletters, advertising copy, annual reports, internal memoranda, and written rules and regulations. Exploring the notion of “multiple masculinities,” the chapter traces the prominent forms of masculinity that emerged in British Airways and assesses their impact on the ways that organizational practices were developed, maintained, and understood. Four key corporate images of masculinity are examined—the pilot, the steward, the engineer, and the “native boy”—and it is argued that those images contributed to the exclusion of women and people of color from those occupations by laying down cultural rules about the ideal typical characteristics of the job holder. The chapter concludes by raising questions about the value of a multiple masculinities focus in explaining changing and contradictory practices of discrimination; the primacy of extra-organizational over organizational practices; and the relationship between multiple masculinities and hegemonic masculinity. Further research is suggested into the extent to which hegemonic masculinity is undermined, over time, by changing and contradictory forms of masculinity within definite sites of gender construction.

The study explores the ways hypermasculine aggression is both communicated and resisted in prisons.

It is based on ethnographic observation conducted at two correctional facilities: a mixed-security prison for young men where the author has facilitated conflict transformation workshops since 2006 and a maximum-security prison for men where she has taught a weekly writing class since 2007.

It found that performances of masculinity among both prisoners and prison guards are frequently structured around symbolic expressions of violence, but that both groups also engage in supportive behaviors that communicate the possibility of nonviolent caring male identity.

The study was limited to two correctional institutions in one state in the United States. Conditions at other correctional facilities may lead to different types of gendered performance. Also, in the tense atmosphere of a prison, neither inmates nor corrections officers express themselves fully in the presence of an outside observer.

The violent masculinities valued and practiced in prisons replicate in communities and institutions beyond the prison walls. Attention to the alternative masculinities practiced in correctional institutions can help scholars challenge the destructive ideologies of hegemonic masculinity and reduce its prevalence; it can influence policy makers to establish more humane conditions and procedures of benefit to individuals, families, and communities.

The study is of value to scholars of gender, culture, and social justice; to policy makers interested in criminal justice reform; and to activists and people of conscience seeking to reduce violence on both sides of the bars.

This autoethnography takes up the matter of toxic masculinity in university settings. We introduce the term “status silencing” as a way to make visible the normalization of toxic masculinity in everyday talk and interaction in university settings among and around colleagues. Status silencing is the process in which the status of a dominant individual becomes a context which renders the story of an individual with a subordinated status untellable or untold. Using strange accounting, we explore active and passive types of status silencing to show how talk and interactions involving toxic masculinity are both internalized and externalized expressions of power and dominance. We argue that while most scholars view toxic masculinity as blatant acts of violence (mass shootings, rape and sexual assault, etc.), it is also a normalized occurrence for feminized others and that toxic masculinity in academic settings is part of an ongoing institutional norm of silence.

Climate change is shaping up to be one of the greatest challenges of the century. Although research has focussed a lot on its generating factors, there has not been much talk about the role of gender in the development and intensity of the phenomenon. While there is significant research on ecofeminism, much less interest has been shown in how certain masculinities influence environmental issues. The chapter has three main sections. The first examines the correlation between gender and climate change while the second provides a glossary of the most important terms used in the first section. Finally, the third provides a wide range of exercises aiming to improve students’ skills in grammar, vocabulary and syntax.