How to Foster Male Engagement in Traditionally Female Communal Roles and Occupations: Insights from Research on Gender Norms and Precarious Manhood

Abstract

While women are increasingly entering traditionally masculine, agentic occupations and roles, there has been less of a shift in the opposite direction: men moving into traditionally feminine, communal occupations and roles. This paper outlines the negative consequences of men's low communal engagement, and how this inhibits various benefits for men themselves, for the women and children around them, and for society as a whole. We review how sociopsychological processes driven by gender norms and precarious manhood keep men from engaging in communal roles and behaviors. Moreover, we outline how insights into these contextual barriers to men's communal engagement may also be used to facilitate change such that men are freed to pursue both agentic and communal roles. We discuss (the effectiveness of) different interventions at the societal, organizational, social, and relational level that may enable men to pursue communal interests.When talking about gender inequality, people most often think about the disadvantages women face as compared to men-such as the gender pay gap, or women's underrepresentation in leadership positions and high status occupations

Why Does Workplace Gender Diversity Matter? Justice, Organizational Benefits, and Policy

“…Drawing on a typology of social identity threats developed by Branscombe, Ellemers, Spears, and Doosje (), Berdahl () argues that one important threat to sex‐based status is the blurring of sex distinctions. In line with this, both women and men who challenge sex distinctions through gender nonconformity are at especially high risk of backlash (Meeussen et al., ) that can manifest in the form of workplace sex‐based harassment (Konik & Cortina, ) and incivility (Zurbrügg & Miner, ). Both low frequency but higher intensity forms of sexual harassment (such as sexual coercion) and more common but less intense forms (e.g., sexist comments) have negative effects on women's personal and occupational well‐being (O'Neil, Sojo, Fileborn, Scovelle, & Milner, ; Sojo, Wood, & Genat, ), as well as job and work withdrawal (Willness, Steel, & Lee, ).…”

“…It reduces barriers to women accessing the many goods of paid work. (For the inverse argument, that men should have equal access to the goods of unpaid communal work and activities, see Meeussen et al., ). In addition, it makes an important contribution to reducing the broader political, sociocultural, and material disadvantages women face, in part by giving women greater influence in high‐level decision‐making.…”

“…Indeed, women are disliked and perceived negatively merely for succeeding in traditionally masculine domains (Rudman et al., ). Conversely, men are judged negatively for behaving in “communal” ways (see Meeussen et al., ), including female‐typical career choices (Heilman & Wallen, ), modesty (Moss‐Racusin, Phelan, & Rudman, ), and requesting flexible work (Rudman & Mescher, ).…”

Country‐level and individual‐level predictors of men's support for gender equality in 42 countries

“…Thus, gender equality programs mostly refer to men indirectly, as the group that wields more power than women, instead of explicitly involving and addressing them. More recently, however, researchers and policymakers have proposed that social change efforts will have more success if we consider men's role in fostering gender equality (Greig et al., 2000; Meeussen, Van Laar, & Van Grootel, 2020; Vescio & Kosakowska‐Berezecka, 2020; Williams, 2000). This perspective notes the importance of examining how high‐status group members (men) perceive and respond to gains made by low‐status group members (women) in the quest for gender equality (Iyer & Ryan, 2009; Teixeira, Spears, & Yzerbyt, 2019).…”

Distancing from a stigmatized social identity: State of the art and future research agenda on self‐group distancing

“…While in modern-day society blatant forms of bias and discrimination continue to flare up, many individuals face discrimination on the basis of their group membership in more subtle and harder to recognize forms (Ellemers & Baretto, 2015). For example, despite equal labour market participation, women and men face stigma and stereotyping in occupations traditionally dominated by the other gender (Croft, Schmader, & Block, 2015;Meeussen, Van Laar, & Van Grootel, 2020). Also, despite formal laws to ensure equal rights, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ + people, and people with physical or mental disabilities face stigma in many areas of their day-to-day lives (Hebl, Foster, Mannix, & Dovidio, 2002;Wilson-Kovacs, Ryan, Haslam, & Rabinovich, 2008).…”