The New Labour government has arguably broken new ground by making `masculinity policy'. Whereas the policy process is always inevitably gendered, with implications for men as well as women, it is only in the last few years that a government has made quite such explicit references to men in some areas of policy. The most high-profile initiatives have been in relation to fathering and the education of boys. In this article, we make out a case that New Labour proceeds with policy optimism about men in the home and pessimism about men outside the home. In contrast, there has been policy pessimism about women in the home and optimism about women outside the home. Where New Labour is optimistic, it tends to produce policies that are encouraging and facilitative, and where New Labour is pessimistic, it can produce policies that are authoritarian.
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