Is Masculinity a Concept Worth Pursuing?

Men Dominate Politics

Despite the effort to achieve gender equality, women have yet to achieve parity in the political arena. A November 18, 2024, article from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace titled “The Election Brought Little Change for Women in Politics”¹ yielded a few insights:

• The United States lags behind other liberal democracies in women’s political representation.
• American women hold only 29 percent of House seats, a quarter of Senate seats, and just under one-third of state legislatures.
• After two decades of growth in representation, there has been no significant uptake in women’s political representation since 2019.

Men continue to dominate political life in the United States despite ongoing suggestions about how to increase the number of women in politics.² Given the stagnation in the representation of women in politics, it is time for a new perspective. It is time to challenge the idea that masculinity is a right to leadership.

Masculinity as a Right to Leadership

Political candidates and practitioners use tactics that reinforce the idea that being fit for political leadership means proving you are “man enough” for the job.³ Being “man enough” or masculine has become a “right to leadership”.

Psychologists Ella Lombard, Jovni Azpeitia, and Sapna Cheryn of the University of Washington explain this right to leadership exists because the culture of U.S. political leadership is rooted in prioritizing and centralizing notions of traditional masculinity.⁴ “Masculine defaults” are traits and characteristics associated with the male gender roles that are valued, rewarded, and regarded as standard. These researchers conclude that the gender gap in American political leadership is no accident. Behaviors and characteristics necessary for political success are rooted in a historical and durable tradition of privileging masculinity.

Privileging Masculinity

Masculinity derives its privilege from the coexistence of the system of patriarchy and the capitalist economic system. The Industrial Revolution of the late 19^th century not only ushered in the separation of the sexes into different silos, it also ushered in capitalism as the dominant economic system. The home was no longer the basic economic unit of society. Husbands became wage earners outside the home. Wives became “homemakers” who were supportive, caretaking, and available sexually. Husbands were good financial providers.

Men lived in the public sphere, where they worked and created wealth, while women inhabited the private sphere—the woman’s sphere. Living in the public arena of competition, men were described as aggressive, competitive, and rational. In contrast, women, assigned to the home, were characterized as being pious, pure, submissive, and domestic. Above all, women were virtuous.

Under capitalism, a person’s worth is attributed to what they can contribute economically to society through labor.⁵ According to the patriarchy, a woman’s role is to serve her male counterparts. The intersection of these two systems means that women have the job of providing free labor for men—cooking, house care, and childcare, allowing them to make work their priority. Women also produce offspring who eventually become part of the workforce and thus contribute to generating profit.

The schematic below depicts the intersection of patriarchy and capitalism in privileging masculinity.

Is Masculinity Currently the Only Criterion for Political Leadership?

Is Donald Trump’s election to the Presidency of the United States an example of masculinity being the way to political power? Peneff and May argue that what makes Trump a leader isn’t his command of political knowledge or his ability to make apolitical allies.⁶ He is seen as a masculine leader. John Harris, writing in Politico magazine describes Trump as a “manly man” who projects masculinity.⁷ And he is described as “strong” and “tough”. Harris notes that when he brags, insults people, is defiant, skirts rules, or shreds familiar standards of presidential behavior, it makes Trump look like a winner.

Who Is Challenging Masculinity?

Psychologists, sociologists, and a variety of others are challenging how we define men in terms of the construct of masculinity. One climate activist, feminist, and a student at a university in Belgium warns that if we want to address the problems of our times and become productive societies, we need to shift away from capitalism and patriarchy and overcome traditional ideas of masculinity.⁸

Here are other challenges to masculinity:

• It is important for researchers to use descriptive terms rather than masculinity to study how men’s actions maintain and reinforce their gender-driving privileged status.⁹
• The Center for American Women and Politics tells us we must “…disrupt the alignment of political leadership with stereotypical masculine traits and imagery.”¹⁰
• A couple’s coach has stopped using masculine and feminine in his work because he objects to the idea that we have masculine and feminine “buckets” into which we sort human qualities.¹¹
• Men must learn to be men without masculinity is one psychologist’s advice.¹²

Division 51 (Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinities, or SPSM) is adopting a new mission statement that revises a previous statement that described traditional masculinity as psychologically harmful.¹³ The revised mission statement no longer undermines the traditional notion of masculinity. While the mission statement does not mention masculinity, SPSMM does state that “…it is dedicated to addressing the unique issues surrounding masculinities.”¹³

Masculinity and femininity are naturalized concepts that are said to designate how men and women conform to our gendered expectations. Both terms are abstract ideas with shifting definitions and applications.¹⁴

Is Masculinity a Concept Worth Pursuing?

This is the question David French, an American political commentator, asked recently in a New York Times opinion piece.¹⁵ This is in response to the widely described “crises in masculinity’ noted by professional psychologists and sociologists concerned that men are falling behind women academically and are suffering from a lack of meaning and purpose. French notes that advice to address these issues from the manosphere where men seek answers is limited to:

• Replace your passivity and hopelessness with frenetic activity tinged with anger and resentment.
• Get in the weight room, dress sharper, and be confident.
• Double down on traditional masculinity that you think is under fire.
• Defy the cultural elite that you believe has destroyed your life.

French pointedly asks the right question. “Is masculinity even a concept worth pursuing?”

French offers an alternative to masculinity. He appeals to universal values rather than defining the male experience in terms of masculinity. French suggests men pursue virtue rather than success, defined within the capitalist economic system. The pursuit of virtue includes:

• Being good rather than feeling good.
• Being committed to character improvement, self-mastery, and growth.
• Practicing the virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage.

As French notes, none of these virtues are distinctly male. This answers French’s question, “Is the concept of masculinity worth pursuing?“ We must answer his question no for the sake of men and for women to be competitive in the political arena.