“What do you understand by gender? How does it shape ‘male identity’?” (2014)
Gender is the set of socially constructed roles, traits and expectations that a society attaches to being male or female, while sex refers to anatomy (Ann Oakley, Sex, Gender and Society, 1972). Gender studies long focused only on women, but men are gendered too. Masculinity is learnt, ranked and policed, not simply inherited.
Understanding gender
- Variable across cultures. Margaret Mead (Sex and Temperament, 1935) found that temperaments considered masculine in the West were shared by both sexes among some New Guinea peoples.
- A structure of power. Gender orders labour, property and authority. Sylvia Walby calls this system patriarchy.
- A practice. Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman (“Doing Gender”, 1987) and Judith Butler (Gender Trouble, 1990) show that gender is continuously performed.
How gender shapes male identity
1. Socialisation into manhood. Families, schools, peer groups and media reward boys for toughness and punish tenderness as “girlish”.
2. Manhood as a test. David D. Gilmore’s Manhood in the Making (1990) found that many cultures treat manhood as a status to be achieved through the roles of impregnator, provider and protector. The Tahitians and the Semai of Malaysia lacked such a cult of the “real man”, which confirms that it is cultural rather than natural.
3. Hegemonic masculinity. In Masculinities (1995), R. W. Connell describes a hierarchy among men:
- hegemonic masculinity, the culturally honoured ideal of heterosexual, dominant and self-reliant manhood;
- complicit masculinity, held by men who enjoy the “patriarchal dividend” without embodying the ideal;
- subordinated masculinities, such as those of gay men;
- marginalised masculinities of subordinate classes and races.
Male identity is therefore anxious and competitive: it is defined against women and against other men.
4. Reason over emotion. Victor J. Seidler traces the Western link between masculinity and detached rationality to the Enlightenment. Men learn to treat emotional needs as weakness, which damages intimacy.
5. Indian inflections.
- Mrinalini Sinha’s Colonial Masculinity (1995) shows how the British contrasted the “manly Englishman” with the “effeminate Bengali”. Nationalists answered with akharas and a cult of physical strength.
- Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella (Men and Masculinities in South India, 2006) show young Kerala men building status through Gulf earnings, consumption and the provider role.
- Caste honour makes upper-caste men guardians of women’s sexuality. Dalit men’s masculinity was historically humiliated and denied.
6. Evidence of the script. NFHS-5 found that 44% of men (and 45% of women) think a husband is justified in beating his wife in some circumstances. The breadwinner norm is visible in male labour force participation of 79.1% against 40.0% for women (PLFS Annual Report 2025).
Costs and change
- Costs to men. The script harms men as well: risk-taking, silence about mental distress, and the shame of unemployment when they cannot be providers. This is what sociologists describe as a “crisis of masculinity”.
- Signs of change. The Time Use Survey 2024 recorded rising male participation in caregiving.
Conclusion
Gender makes male identity a social achievement built through socialisation, cultural tests and hierarchies among men, and anchored in power over women. Because masculinity is plural and practised, it can be rebuilt. Gender equality therefore requires changing what it means to be a man, not only empowering women.