Since the 1970’s, working class men in particular have suffered from economic changes. In the manufacturing industry, high paid, skilled jobs were lost permanently. During the 1980’s industries were put out of production permanently, which made men feel like they were being discarded. Their chance of finding another skilled job with equal pay was extremely low and ex-miners who found work following the pit closures lost about 30% in wages.
A man would find it hardest being redundant because so much of their identity came from their jobs, rather than as a parent or husband. In losing their job it resulted in reduced economic power, as well as social status and power within the family. Men had lost confidence about their future.
Under the new deal with Labour, young men were expected to lower their expectations and except jobs with lower wages and hours, the same as women. This new discipline had hoped to put men back on line and cut off the possibility of opting out. Instead many young men disappeared from the system altogether.
Now the Labour Government had turned its attention to the crisis facing young men, because there has been an increase of crime, truancy, drug addiction and other social problems. A lot of these problems with young men have been blamed on the family. More and more boys seem to grow up without a male role model in their lives.
Charles Murray had blamed single mothers for causing underclass male criminals. He condemned mothers for allegedly purging fathers from the family. Murray suggested that young men were essentially barbarian who would be civilised by marriage. But capitalism and economic restructuring over the 20 years have encouraged the levels of crime and violence which have risen dramatically.
Today the media would have us believe that men are being undermined by women becoming more powerful. The media has also bombarded us with evidence of how badly off males are: in their health status, in their emotional lives and in their educational achievements. It also carries simplistic scare stories of men losing rights, that this is political madness gone mad. A moral panic of masculinity being in crisis had been created by the media.
Men seem to be the talk of political, academic and policy debates, but in the past there were also debates about men only today it has become more explicit, more gendered and more critical.
One of the problems of masculinity is it is riddled with contradictions. It is made up of stories and expectations, many of them incompatible. Men are taught to regard power and success as the supreme value, but when they leave the work place, they are expected to enter into fair relationships with their partners and children. They are taught to despise women and to desire them. They are taught to fear other men as competitors, but to worship the idea of mate ship.
A ‘real man’ stands alone. He is independent and self sufficient. Above all he copes without complaint.
There are fathers who brutalise their sons in the interest of toughening them up to survive in a harsh world. Groups of boys will turn on those who are different. In team sports and the military provided essential ingredients of violent competition, to inflict pain on others in order to win. They learn to be tough, ignoring pain and emotions, and being ‘like a girl’ was the biggest insult to a man.
Today men are told to be gentler, but when they become gentle they are told they are wimps. Men are told to be vulnerable but as soon as they are they are accused of being too needy. Men are told to relax and to be less performance, but less successful men are rejected for lacking in ambition.
The crisis of masculinity today could be seen as differences between men rather than differences between men and women. Unemployed and unmarried men have higher mortality and illness rates than other groups of men. Class and race seems to be the main predictors of educational failure, unemployment and crime. Unemployment also seems to be the main cause of men committing serious offences as well as high rates of suicide.
However, whatever the insecurities of men all over the world, they still have greater access to cultural status, political authority, corporate power, individual wealth and material comforts, this secures the hierchical structuring of gender through relations of dominance. Masculinity has been symbolically equal to power.
The roles at home for male and female remain largely unchanged. Women still do the housework and childcare even when both parents are employed or if the woman works and the man are unemployed.
Is masculinity in crisis? I believe there is more to the crisis that could ever be explained by the rise of women’s movement or the choices of economic independence for women. It seems that men feel women have many more options than they do now, for women there are many identities, but for men they believe theses options are limited. I think maybe men need support just like women had, in times that are forever changing. Then maybe men could start to have a feeling of belonging and finding a new identity that is comfortable with their masculinity.
