4. Gender: The Gendered Burden of Care (Brazil)

Welcome to the module on gender and care in Transforming Lives through Care.

 In previous modules, we explored care through kinship, gifts, more-than-human relationships, and embodied practice. This week we turn to one of the most important questions in the anthropology of care: Why is care so often women's work?

Across much of the world, women perform most childcare, housework, emotional labour, and care for older relatives. Yet this pattern is neither universal nor inevitable. Anthropologists ask how different societies organise care, how ideas about femininity and masculinity shape expectations, and why caring labour is often undervalued. In this module, we use the concept of gender to examine how care is distributed and experienced.

 
 

🎯 Learning Goals

  • Define gender as a social and cultural concept.
  • Explain how caring responsibilities are often distributed along gendered lines.
  • 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

📘 Essential Materials 

📖 Read: Scheper-Hughes, N. (1989, October 1). The Human Strategy: Death Without Weeping. Natural History, 8. 

"In the absence of firm expectation that a child will survive, mother love as we conceptualize it (whether in popular terms or in the psychobiological notion of maternal bonding) is attenuated and delayed with consequences for infant survival. In an environment already precarious to young life, the emotional detachment of mothers toward some of their babies contributes even further to the spiral of high mortality"

Summary: In her study of poor mothers in Northeast Brazil, anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes challenges common assumptions about motherhood. Faced with extreme poverty, mothers sometimes appear emotionally distant from sick infants. Rather than seeing this as a lack of care, Scheper-Hughes argues that maternal love itself is shaped by social and economic conditions. The reading encourages us to question the idea that caring behaviours are simply natural expressions of womanhood.

Watch this presentation on Gender and Care:


Here are the slides if you'd like.

📚 Recommended Materials

Defining "gender" is not straightforward. In her "Introduction", Nanda 2000, Gender Diversity presents a simple model:
  • "Sex" is a biological reality, related to genitalia and, ultimately, DNA. Both males and females can produce tears by crying.
  • "Gender" is the cultural meanings attached to sex. In some cultures, it is not permissible for men to cry. 
In this way of thinking, there is a biological reality of bodies. But, different cultures attach different meanings to those bodies. 

For more on that, please check out this blog on "sex" vs "gender".

And watch this presentation, but please also note the Content Note that it includes discussion of sexual violence and anthropological interpretations of rape. The material is presented for educational purposes to examine how different societies understand gender, sexuality, and consent. No graphic descriptions are included.



 
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? To find out, read my summary of Aaron Jackson "Attuned Fathering". Or read this abridged version of Jackson's article  "Attuned Fathering". 

🔎 Further Research

 
For more on men involved in caring, read Aaron J. Jackson, “Masculinity and the Modern Dad” (Sapiens.org). 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". Jackson explores how modern fatherhood challenges old ideas of masculinity. Caring dads are reshaping gender norms, emphasizing emotion, connection, and shared responsibility.
 
Also, check out my blog summarising Jackson's "Attuned Fathering and the Moral Dimensions of Caregiving." Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 96 no. 1, 2023, p. 65-90.
 
More complex understandings are unnecessary at first year level, but for a deeper look at gender from an anthropological perspective, you could read about the Gerai, who believe that sex is not so much biological, but rather an in-built tendency to be land clearer or not. Helliwell, C 2000, ""It's only a penis": Rape, feminism, and difference", Signs, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 789-816, but please note that this reading comes with a Content Note that it includes discussion of sexual violence and anthropological interpretations of rape. The material is presented for educational purposes to examine how different societies understand gender, sexuality, and consent. No graphic descriptions are included. 
I've discuss the article in this blog and have written a summary of "It's only a penis" here. 

Nanda treats the sexed body as a reality. She holds that, in reality, there are male bodies and female bodies. By this understanding what matters is the sense or meanings that different cultures give to them. Butler, by contrast, argues that sex and gender are not real. What is real is merely acts or actions. For more on this intriguing and highly influential idea, check out this blog:

 

 

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