Masculinities in the construction industry: A double‐edged sword for health and wellbeing?

Abstract

Construction remains a male‐dominated industry and men in construction suffer high rates of illness and injury compared to other industries. Consideration of men and masculinities may support any attempt to maintain and promote the health and wellbeing of construction workers. This article discusses qualitative case study research conducted with stakeholders in the UK construction industry around health and wellbeing. Our thematic analysis highlights how masculinities operate to both inhibit and promote healthy practices. On the one hand, a culture of stoicism pertaining to illness or injury was evident, whilst a competitive ethos between occupational groups was observed to increase risk‐taking and poor health choices. However, interviewees identified homosocial camaraderie and respect for lived experience as a means to promote positive health behaviour. Differences between younger and older generations of employees were noted. Overall, we argue that men's work and associated health practices can be understood as ‘rational’ individualized responses to structural deregulation and insecurity within the construction industry.

Brothers and broken dreams: Men, masculinity, and emotions in platform capitalism

“…We found that new forms of capitalism advocated by platform companies and hegemonic working‐class masculinity in Vietnamese society clashed in the male drivers' experiences. Recent research has shown how men engage in negotiating discrepancies between hegemonic and alternative forms of masculinity when they face threats to masculine breadwinner roles (Hanna et al., 2020). Our attention was drawn to locally specific modes of hegemonic masculinity and their persistence (Goldstein‐Gidoni, 2020; Kalemba, 2020; Pecis & Priola, 2019) and to a degree of “normative ambivalence” that characterized shared experiences and emotions of male drivers as they navigated between societal traditions and the promises and pressures of platform capitalism (cf.…”

“…These companies' promises of autonomy and prosperity may also engender new forms of desired masculinity. Masculinities straddle work and other spheres of life, and assumptions about men's duty to provide for their families and about appropriate fatherhood inform these changes and shifts (Byun & Won, 2020; Hanna et al., 2020; Kalemba, 2020; Lund et al., 2019). Choi (2018, p. 495) shows this in a study of taxi drivers in China: “being occupied in paid employment symbolizes a man's willingness to take on his responsibility to support his family and to be its breadwinner.”…”

“…Men's experiences in platform companies offer a timely and relevant setting for complementing extant research that elucidates how men reproduce but also challenge masculinities at work (Hanna et al., 2020; Kalemba, 2020; Pecis & Priola, 2019; Perrott, 2019). While women's informal and precarious work in the Global South is well documented (Ghosh, 2021; Lawton et al., 2015), men and masculinity have received less attention (Choi, 2018; Connell, 2016; Jones, 2006).…”

Negotiating masculinities in times of crisis: On the COVID frontline in Pakistan

“…Skilled bodily activity or body practices demonstrating superior levels of strength and stamina, such as the ability to work long hours, are repeatedly affirmed as desirable (Berdahl et al., 2018). The persistence of macho attitudes and neglect of the body and health within the construction industry (Hanna et al., 2020), the positive correlation between physical toughness and masculinity (McCreary, Saucer & Courtenay, 2005), and the processes and social constraints by which masculinity is defined and disrupted in terms of the body in the sporting industry (Connell, 1990) are examples of empirical studies exploring the role of the body in enacting masculinity in line with dominant societal norms. However, the mechanics by which different types of hegemonic and non‐hegemonic masculinities may become disrupted or reinforced in terms of the body require further investigation so as to explicate the role of the body in reifying or disrupting the hegemonic ideals associated with physical masculinity during crisis management.…”

Thinking about risk and vulnerability in CSMM

“…The same is true of gay men compared to straight men and men of colour are at a higher risk of violence than white men in Western countries generally. We know that men who work in manual labour and construction jobs are far more at risk of injury or death than middle-class men who tend to work in offices (Hanna, Gough, & Markham, 2020). Of course, we also know now that older men have been more likely to die from Covid-19 than younger men in every single country (Mallapaty, 2020).…”