Introduction

Naming International Studies

One practical question posed by the growth of these geographically broad studies on men and masculinities is what to call them; naming is not innocent. In studying various wide-ranging and globalizing phenomena, Portes (2001) usefully distinguishes “international” concerning activities and programs of nation-states, “multinational” referring to large-scale institutions, such as corporations, and “transnational” meaning activities initiated and sustained by noninstitutional actors, networks, or groups across borders. However, slightly differently, in making sense of this growth of “international” studies and researches, some distinctions may be made between “comparative research,” in which nations are compared; “supranational research,” in which the viewpoint is above the nation-state, as in some European Union (EU) policy studies; and “transnational research,” in which the focus is on processes across nations and national boundaries, as in studies of transnational violences, migration and ICTs, and which examine new social configurations more complex than the first two approaches (see Hearn 2004, 2015; Hearn, Blagojević, and Harrison 2013). These distinctions can apply to both the content of research and the way in which research is itself organized (Hearn 2004). So here, for the sake of simplicity, I use “international” to encompass all these three genres of research of men and masculinities: comparative, supranational, and transnational.

Contextualizing Comparative Studies

Having clarified terminology, I now take one step back, and consider some of the further, more particular contextualizations of these international studies on men and masculinities. As noted, until recently, the critical study of men and masculinity has largely escaped strong comparative scrutiny, although it has received indirect attention through comparative surveys of gender relations (e.g., Cotter 2004; Mandel and Semyonov 2005, 2006; Gray, Kittilson, and Sandholtz 2006; Walby 2009). There are many good reasons for conducting comparative studies, for example, the potential for deconstructing assumptions underpinning gender practices and indeed policies in different countries. This process in turn may facilitate the reconstruction of more effective policies and practices. There is also awareness that such practices and policies increasingly interact transnationally: consequently, research may seek to explore the processes and outcomes of those transnational interactions and intersections. More mundanely, they could be understood as simply testing social scientific analysis by way of examining new, wider, and various national and societal contexts.

There are long established traditions for studying men and masculinity internationally, most notably in comparative, cross-cultural studies of nation-states, societies, or substantial areas with strong ethnic or cultural identifications and solidarities. There is a long history of comparative anthropology from Margaret Mead, George P. Murdock, and many others that examines how men and women are constructed differently within different societies and cultures. This perspective raises the possibility of rereading anthropological and social science information on gender relations in different cultures. A relatively early example of a cross-cultural view on men through the lens of culture is Gilmore’s (1990) Manhood in the Making, through rereading studies of “manhood” in the Mediterranean, South Pacific, Brazil, New Guinea, Uganda, and elsewhere. Those studies emphasized cultural specificity in the forms of “manhood,” while developing generalizations on men’s dominance, paradoxically often pursued through some sense of self-sacrifice and service to others. Such an approach is strongly based in cultural individualism, with culture as an “individual” object; this view has been critiqued by more sophisticated anthropological readings, as, for example, in Dislocating Masculinity (Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994).

Another approach that has been especially influential in European public and social policy analysis has concerned the intersection of gender regimes and welfare regimes. In the case of differential welfare regimes, the most common model applied in this specific fashion is that devised by Esping-Andersen (1990, 1996). But there has also been extensive critique of such models in terms of their insufficient attention to gender relations (Duncan 1995; Sainsbury 1999; Walby 1997; Orloff 2009). The field of comparative social welfare, with patterns of both convergence and divergence (Pringle 1998), has provided one stimulation to comparative studies on men and masculinities. The emergence of postsocialism in Central and Eastern Europe has also stimulated further interest in men’s locations within differential gendered welfare regimes (Hearn and Pringle with members of Critical Research on Men in Europe 2006).

More recently, a further comparative perspective has been promoted in studies of inequality and its social effects. In the admittedly, largely nongendered, but strongly selling, book The Spirit Level, Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) demonstrate how national societal inequality is broadly opposed to average health and well-being. Although wealth and income increase the well-being of the population, the relation between these factors levels off with increased wealth. They argue that a key mechanism is that inequality facilitates mental distress, or more specifically, the greater the social evaluation in society, the more social anxieties are experienced, resulting in harmful effects for people.

Their analysis has some parallels with Walby’s (2009) eminently gendered analysis in Globalization and Inequalities, which reviews inequalities across economy, polity, civil society, and violence. In this, she argues there are different modernities, based on either neoliberalism with relatively greater inequality or social democracy with relatively greater equality. Walby’s work affirms the presence of “varieties of capitalism” (Hall and Soskice 2001) and the need to gender them (Mandel and Shalev 2009; Estévez-Abe 2009; Rubery 2009). In general terms, greater class equality tends to favor greater gender equality and vice versa, in that differences in resources become reduced, including by gender. At a general level, more gender equal, or less gender unequal, societies tend to be more equal in class terms. Having said that, high vertical gender segregation is likely to mean something different in less affluent societies compared with those better off, and in those that are internally very unequal compared to those more equal. Indeed, these issues are of profound importance with tendencies toward increasing inequality within many countries, even if there are some signs of decreasing inequalities between nation-states, especially with the rise of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa economies.

Supranational and Transnational Data, Policy, and Practice

A key stimulus to such international work is the increased availability of cross-national and international data sources and studies. These have been stimulated and supported by the United Nation (UN) and its agencies, most obviously the United Nations Development Programme annual reports, ² UN WomenWatch, and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), but also the World Health Organization (WHO), ³ the World Economic Forum, ⁴ the World Bank, ⁵ the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (Duban 2011), the PISA studies on educational attainment, ⁶ and various international studies on violence. For example, men’s violence has received significant attention from the UN, EU, the Council of Europe, UNICEF, UNESCO, WHO (World Health Organization 2013), and other transnational organizations. There is now a wealth of such resources, some of them available online, some with more limited accessibility. Thus in some cases, this has fed into supranational analyses, in some cases supragovernmental and policy driven.

Such data sources, which often require major statistical infrastructures and international cooperation intersect with the wide range of policy, political, and practical initiatives. These are both top–down and bottom–up. Following the world conferences on women that began in 1975, there has been increasing international debate on the implications of gender issues for men. The Platform for Action adopted at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women ran as follows:

The advancement of women and the achievement of equality between women and men are a matter of human rights and a condition for social justice and should not be seen in isolation as a women’s issue.…The Platform for Action emphasizes that women share common concerns that can be addressed only by working together and in partnership with men towards the common goal of gender equality around the world. (United Nations 2001, 17)

The politics of internationalism are, if anything, not restricted to the nation-state and national boundaries. Transversal feminist, antiracist, anti-imperialist, antiglobalization, human rights, and green, ecological, and sustainability movements have all impacted on international and global consciousness in research and politics, including on understandings of men’s gendered and intersectional positioning. In addition, there are many specific feminist and profeminist campaigns and projects on men and masculinities, with a transnational, internationalist orientation, many of which are located in the global South (Ferguson et al. 2004; Jones 2006; van der Gaag 2013). These include Promundo, Sonke Gender Justice (both of which have sponsored the International Men and Gender Equality Survey [IMAGES] surveys), One Man Can (South Africa and Sudan), MenCare, Men’s Action for Stopping Violence Against Women (India), and CariMAN (Caribbean Men’s Action Network). The umbrella organization MenEngage has over 700, mainly group, members, with national networks in Africa (seventeen), the Caribbean (five), Europe (sixteen), Latin America (ten), North America (two), and South Asia (five). These and many similar various political and practical actions and perspectives are often linked to local research and sometimes to international research efforts too. They are also closely concerned with research results on how both general societal change and more specific interventions actually change, or not, men’s actions and practices, such as in terms on reducing violence, reducing health risks, and improving health and well-being for all. An example of this practical approach to intervention and change is the project, “Engendering Men: Evidence on Routes to Gender Equality,” developed by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University, in collaboration with Promundo-US and Sonke Gender Justice Network. ⁷

These policies, politics, and practices are one aspect of wider moves toward transnationalism and transnationalization. Such transnational moves have opened alternative and complex references and relations to nation-states (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Blanc 1992). Transnational processes of change involve flows of people, money or information across borders, and the crossing and spanning of borders by social networks, organizations, and institutions. For example, focusing on transnational migration, Basch, Schiller, and Blanc-Szanton (1994, 6) reformulate nation and national boundaries in their definition of transnationalism as:

…the process by which immigrants forge and sustain multistranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement. We call these processes transnationalism to emphasize that many immigrants today build social fields that cross geographic, cultural and political borders.

In some ways, one might see this emerging transnational focus, albeit with some admittedly different strands and tendencies, as seeking to apply some of the insights of postcolonialism and “Southern theory” (Connell 2008) back to men, in making the One the Other (Hearn 1996). Taking this broad, meta-view does, however, bring some risks. Such a translocal, transnational perspective certainly does not mean a perspective-less “god’s eye” view. The limited, but growing, amount of work devoted specifically to men and masculinities seen and understood transnationally suggests there is major scope for extending such critical analysis, through the national, societal, cultural, and transsocietal recontextualizations of men, masculinities, and men’s practices, and their problematization.

Some Methodological Questions

It is clear that studying men, masculinities, and gender equality internationally raises a large number of practical, methodological, conceptual, and theoretical issues. Such international studies depend upon funding possibilities and are also dependent in a different way, on local research and policy infrastructures. In many parts of the world, especially in the global South, there are major challenges of transport and physical access. They also raise difficulties of comparability. Historical and linguistic differences may severely complicate comparison, as can systemic, definitional, and cultural variations between countries and other locations. Then there is the question of the variety of approaches to and indeed critiques of gender equality: what is to be included, how is it to be measured? How does this look different in different parts of the world? How does a focus on men, masculinities, and gender equality relate to women, femininities, further genders, and gender equality? How to deal with gender, and sexual, variance, and with diversity and intersectionality?

Another important question here, with both technical and political aspects, concerns what is seen as the appropriate unit of analysis. Is it the nation-state, the region, the individual, or even the family, household, or living arrangement? As will be seen, in the articles presented here different approaches are used. Aggregated data on men and masculinities, especially at the national or regional level, may well hide large variations across that data. For example, in studying through qualitative methods, 200 male and female villagers in rural Bangladesh, Ahmed (2008) found considerable variation across masculinities—“high-minded,” “mixed,” and “abusive” masculinities—that entailed different interpretations of Islam, although not necessarily directed related to Islamic religious observance; such variance can easily be lost in averaged quantitative measures or generalizations.

Moreover, the use of the nation-state as the unit of analysis can obscure may wider regional differences beyond, as well as variation in regions within, as, for example, with variations across German länder and other federal systems or whether the United Kingdom is one country or four. Comparison of units of different population size may also be a problem, for example, comparing a country like Italy with 60 million people and another like Estonia of less than 1.3 million, as if they are similar entities. Also, a strong relationship or correlation in a large population country may be obscured by lack of such a relation in several smaller countries. And, as we well know, correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

Then there is the matter of the use of different kinds of data and data analysis, including quantitative and qualitative approaches (Connell 2013). The first article employs primary quantitative data and analysis; the second uses secondary data analysis; the third draws on extensive quantitative secondary data analysis, as well as secondary qualitative and theoretical research literature across thirty-one European countries. The final article is policy-orientated but strongly based in qualitative and quantitative action research, especially from the global South. A tangential word is in order here on how in recent years in some critical quarters there has been a strange move away from quantitative analysis, as if avoiding statistics is a sign of criticality. In fact, feminist empiricism has a long and distinguished history. This is especially so if one is interested in, say, income inequality or poverty or gender–pay gap, or indeed climate change, and so on. This avoidance seems odd to me, as long as one is aware of the limitations of different statistical analyses, especially as it is rare to find a scholar who is dismissive of quantitative methods who is also happy to take a quantitative pay cut.

The Special Issue

The main body of the special issue comprises four articles and three commentaries. The first article, “Pathways to Gender-equitable Men: Findings from the International Men and Gender Equality Survey in Eight Countries,” by Ruth Levtov and colleagues uses individual-level data from the IMAGES of eight low- and middle-income countries: Brazil, Chile, Mexico, India, Bosnia, and Gender Equality Policy Project coordinated by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), Washington, DC, and Instituto Promundo. These data are then analyzed at the individual level, aggregated by country, and then compared across countries. More specifically, the article describes how men tend to report positive but ambivalent attitudes toward gender equality, but these are often not translated into gender-equal outcomes, with men in lower income countries tending to be less supportive for gender equality. It sets out those factors that tend to predict men’s more gender-equal attitudes: men’s own education attainment, mother’s education, men’s reports of father’s domestic participation, family background of mother alone or joint decision parents, and not witnessing violence to mother. Men’s self-reported attitudes are in turn predictors of men’s gender-equal practices, more domestic participation and child care, less interpersonal violence, and more satisfaction with primary relationship, although caregiving largely arises from life circumstances, not gender-equal attitudes. There are also some associations of antigender equality attitudes and anti-immigration. This article is commented on through two short reviews by Tamara Shefer and Kopano Ratele.

In contrast, the next contribution, Øystein Gullvåg Holter’s article, ‘“What’s in it for men?’: Old Question, New Data,” is based on eighty-one sets of aggregate macro-level data, at the national European or US state level. It considers the case that, in some respects, greater societal gender equality, or less gender inequality, may well be very much in men’s interests, through, for example, improved health and less violence, perhaps counterintuitively even more so than women’s. Apart from the analytical significance of this research, this is a direct refutation of the premises and conclusions of antifeminist men, who see gender equality as a threat to men’s interests and well-being. This article, by my former colleague coeditor, is complemented by a short commentary by Bob Pease, the third former colleague coeditor.

The third article, “Men and Gender Equality—European insights,” by Elli Scambor and colleagues derives from the European Commission study, The Role of Men in Gender Equality, for which, along with many others, I was part of the large research consortium. This policy study drew heavily on Eurostat data, much of it individually based, but also a wealth of other sources and resources, statistical, qualitative, and indeed conceptual and theoretical. This article summarizes some of the major trends in men’s situation in Europe set out at greater length in the extended study (Scambor, Wojnicka, and Bergmann 2013) and from that outlines policy directions for men to contribute to greater gender equality. An important theme here is men’s gradually changing relations to care and caring, albeit unevenly across Europe, with the need to move to more caring masculinities. It also points to how Europe and the EU can be seen as a metaphorical laboratory for study of men and masculinities, gender relations, and social science more generally.

The final article in the special issue, “Working with Men and Boys to Prevent Gender-based Violence: Principles, Lessons Learned, and Ways Forward,” is a policy and practice overview earlier presented at the UN by Dean Peacock and Gary Barker of the organizations, Sonke Gender Justice and Promundo, respectively.

Finally, just as these studies are international in content, so they are in process and authorship. All in all, scholars from at least fourteen countries are included in this special issue, and all the four main articles are the product of major international research and policy collaboration. Indeed, this special article represents an international and transnational intervention of its own that hopefully will contribute to change toward gender justice in theorizing, policy, and practice.