Masculinities

This is a collection of papers presented at the Harold Wolpe Trust's Colloquium on Masculinities, Crime and Violence. Elaine Salo, of the  African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town, presents:  ‘Ek’s ʼn ou’: The social and cultural construction of masculinities in Manenberg on the Cape Flats. Sasha Gear, from the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR)presented "Productions of sex, gender and violence in South African men’s prisons" while Adelene Africa, from the Department of Psychology, University of Cape Town looked at "Violent women: Findings from a Sample of Female Offenders".

The different processes associated with globalisation have led to rising rates of paid work by women often in contexts where male employment is stagnant or declining. This paper explores how women and men are dealing with this feminisation of labour markets in the face of the widespread prevalence of male breadwinner ideologies and the apparent threat to male authority represented by women's earnings. Responses have varied across the world but there appears to be a remarkable resistance to changes in the domestic division of unpaid work within the household and a continuing failure on the part of policymakers to provide support for women's care responsibilities, despite the growing importance of their breadwinning roles. Many of the services previously provided on an unpaid basis are being transferred to the paid economy but most working women continue to bear a disproportionate burden of domestic responsibility. There is evidence that women may be using their newly acquired earning power to challenge the injustice of the double work burden in ways that pose a challenge to long-term processes of social reproduction.