Constructing manhood : men's rights activists and feminist men's shared meanings of gender
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Despite the sweeping changes of the "gender revolution, " gender inequality persists across many domains. Scholars and activists alike have long recognized the importance of engaging men in feminist work to end gender inequality. In this dissertation, I ask what accounts for individual differences in men's willingness to contribute to or challenge gender inequality. I conducted 62 in-depth interviews with men who identify as feminists and men who identify as men's rights activists (or members of an anti-feminist social movement). Drawing on this data, I argue that feminist men and men who are men's rights activists are surprisingly similar in their motivation for engaging with two social movements that have diametrically opposed aims for gender inequality. I find that both groups of men participate in gender activism as a response to cultural narratives that portray men and other high-status group members (e.g., whites, straight people) as the recipients of unearned advantage. They interpret these cultural narratives as a threat to their morality and turn to activism as a strategy to recoup a sense of moral goodness. I find that men's attraction to their particular movement is not explained completely by their beliefs about gender, masculinity, and inequality, but instead shaped by their social contexts, primarily their educational environments, relationships with women, and interactions with feminists. Throughout this dissertation, I describe how men's identity work both intentionally and unintentionally challenges and contributes to gender inequality. By leveraging this unique comparison case, I show how the gender revolution has created an opportunity for men to contest meanings associated with masculinity, but that men's identity projects can have complex and contradictory consequences for gender inequality. This dissertation provides a unifying theory of men's gender activism, a compelling explanation for why gender inequality is so persistent, and practical insight into how to recruit more men to feminist struggle.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Carian, Emily Kiyoko | |
|---|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Correll, Shelley Joyce | |
| Thesis advisor | Correll, Shelley Joyce | |
| Thesis advisor | Fields, Corey | |
| Thesis advisor | Pedulla, David | |
| Thesis advisor | Ridgeway, Cecilia L | |
| Degree committee member | Fields, Corey | |
| Degree committee member | Pedulla, David | |
| Degree committee member | Ridgeway, Cecilia L | |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Sociology. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Emily K. Carian. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Sociology. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Emily Kiyoko Carian
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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