Masculinity can be defined as having possession of the qualities a man or the characteristics and behaviour expected of men in many different cultures. Mostly these characteristics infer aggressiveness, domination, strength and stoicism, boldness and leadership. In the advent of globalization which brought about the widening as well as deepening of the relations of governments in search for trade and knowledge as well as technology the gender factor has contributed greatly. Men and women have sought to succeed and find opportunities in the global market by using their gender predisposition and have sought to expand and grow through gender. Traditionally i.e. before World War II, men were the sole bread winners and performed the duties of protection, search for food for the family and were mainly leaders and women were meant to be subordinates. Masculinism has sought to sustain this approach in areas of business, family, politics and mainly socioeconomically. Therefore this paper looks at how men have committed to fight for their survival i.e. masculinity and survive in a world that is now becoming highly competitive gender wise and favouring men as much as women.
After the way masculinity moved differently towards survival more than domination as feminism arose which sought to protect and favour women in the advent of globalization. White men have been considered to benefit from this advancement thereby affecting men racially as well as ethnically, religiously and within different age groups and nationals. The effect of masculinity in politics is obvious with leadership being viewed as mostly men and men making it look like so. This has grown even in religious circles where Christianity and Islam, being significantly large, have continued to insist on men being leaders and women staying in submission. Feminism has however sought to fight this paradigm by trying to insist that women should get equal opportunities in the globe and not being abused or oppressed. While oppression is evil, the neutral way that masculinity has approached and reasoned is that featured in hegemony masculinity. This is a strategy by men in globalization to view business and wealth distribution as favouring men i.e. as fair. Therefore men align themselves in a manner that favours them in the business market and in wealth that seems to favour them. Masculinity is not so much about elimination in gender but more about subordination. Hegemony masculinity is a positioning that allows survival of men in the business world and wealth creation.
Emphasized femininity is a contrary to masculinity with emphasis being that women can as well be involved. Masculinity indeed has caused suffering among women and it is what encouraged prostitution in the view of prostitution being beneficial to business and saw some countries legalizing it. However the survival of this idea of a man being the bread winner and fighting to remain as so is questionable as education and policies by government continue to favour women more and more and men on the other hand making efforts to remain as such. A contemporary example is job opportunities especially international ones being offered more to men than to women on the notion that men are flexible than women who must take care of their children. The survival of this paradigm is bound by time and may shift practically and socially. However, opportunities still continue to be treated based on gender and not on ability of the person.
An example is the global employment rates between male and female according to international labour trends. The rate of women versus men employment is uneven with men being favoured in the job market (International labour organization, 2011). This could be due to the trends of masculinity and men being favoured while women are encouraged to take up the household chores. The gap is however reducing in size.
References
Eitzen, D. S., & Zinn, M.B. (Eds.). (2012). Globalization: The Transformation of Social Worlds (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
International Labour Organization. (2011). Global employment trends: the challenges of job recovery. Geneva. Retrieved from http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/@publ/documents/publication/wcms_150440.pdf
