6. Masculinity: Gender & Care

 Welcome to Week 6 of Transforming Lives through Care. This is part of a course in the Anthropology of Care at La Trobe University.

We see in this subject how care work is often feminised. What happens when men become involved in care work? How does it impact their sense of being masculine? How does it impact the care that they give?

🎯 Learning Goals

• Understand how gender shapes expectations and experiences of care work.
• Examine how men navigate masculinity when engaged in caregiving roles.
• Reflect on how intimate acts of care may challenge or transform traditional gender norms.

🚦 Introduction

The concept of "gender" in anthropology refers to the culturally and socially constructed roles, behaviours, and expectations assigned to individuals based on perceived sex, and is distinct from biological determinism; it helps anthropologists understand how identities, power relations, and care practices are shaped differently across societies. In this subject, we’ve seen how care work is often feminised. But what happens when men enter caregiving spaces? How does this affect their sense of masculinity? And how does their presence shape the care they provide?

This week, we explore these questions through ethnographic stories, reflective tasks, and readings that highlight how caregiving fathers and stay-at-home dads negotiate changing ideas about gender and care

📚 Recommended Materials

Read Aaron J. Jackson, "Rethinking Masculinity."

For fathers facing " the overwhelming responsibility of caring for someone with significant cognitive and physical disabilities... traditional understandings of masculinity that valorize individuation and eschew emotional intimacy can aggravate the difficulty"

Notes: Jackson explores how modern fatherhood challenges old ideas of masculinity. Caring dads are reshaping gender norms, emphasizing emotion, connection, and shared responsibility

📘 Essential Materials

.

Read Aaron J. Jackson, "Attuned Fathering" 

🗣️ Interactive tasks

Complete the Earl's Experience worksheet.Rethinking Masculinity Through Care.  Read the extended story of Earl (from Jackson’s article) and respond to two short questions. Earl’s story invites reflection on how intimacy, disability, and daily care can transform inherited ideas of manhood

Compete Worksheet: Masculinity & Care; Stay-at-home dads. This includes a short LMS poll based on the Jackson reading and video Stay-at-Home Dads Reflect on Criticism (ABC News). Your responses will be shared anonymously in next week’s discussion.

Ideas of care & gender in migration

One fascinating area of research is how ideas of care and gender are maintained or transformed in migration.

Salvadorian ideas on gender & care

We saw how the Salvadorian mother instilled gendered values of care in her children

She complimented her sons on being responsible fathers and hoped “que sepan educar a sus hijos porque ya en otro país, pienso que no es igual que aquí en El Salvador” (may you know how to raise your children, because once in another country, I think it must be different from here in El Salvador). She urged her nineteen-year-old daughter Serena to cuidarse (take care of herself), highly gendered advice to remain chaste and avoid pregnancy (Arnold 2021, 138)

This, Arnold (2021, 139) notes,  "simultaneously communicates concern and affection for her children alongside normative gendered models of care"

Why would a woman insist on reinforcing sexist/patriarchal values?

Balinese ideas on gender & care

Bali is an Indonesian island famous as a tourist destination. Some Balinese men marry holidaying Dutch women. In "Balinese Migrant Masculinities", Dragajlovic describes how these Balinese men adapt to life in the Netherlands:

most of the men can only find work in low-paid manual labor. In situations where a Dutch spouse has a much higher annual income than the Balinese spouse.... Balinese men often take on most of the domestic labor and child rearing duties and often work part-time outside the home. Some of the men take on casual domestic work. Grounded in understandings of ethnicized domestic labor that draws on the Dutch imaginary of colonial servitude and obliging Indonesian workers, Balinese (and other Indonesian) people have easier access to the domestic labor market. Thus, Balinese men take on domestic and caring work, which in Bali is considered ‘women’s work’. Such shifts in gender relations leads to an ongoing negotiation of the masculine self.

The Netherlands colonised Indonesia, so Dutch people are familiar with the idea of Indonesians as servants. As a result Balinese men can get work doing domestic labour. 

What is the colonial connection here? 

Do you think it is a form of exploitation?

🏁 Conclusion

Summary

Care work is not just shaped by gender—it is also a site where gender norms are made and unmade. This week, we’ve seen how men who engage in care confront and often reshape ideas about masculinity, responsibility, and emotional labour.

Significance

Understanding how masculinity shifts in caregiving contexts helps us rethink who is imagined as capable of care. It shows that care is not biologically destined or socially fixed—it is relational, dynamic, and political.

What’s Next

Next week, we turn to care in transnational families—how migration reshapes intimacy, kinship, and obligation across distance.

🔎 Further Research

Read Jackson's short piece, Rethinking Masculinity: Fathers as Caregivers