Decolonizing Care: Hegemonic Masculinity,Caring Masculinities,and the Material Configurations of Care

Introduction

In wake of the popular theorization of hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Messerschmidt 2019) has emerged a series of new contenders, vying in the slipstream of Gender Studies, Feminism, and Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities (CSMM). Examples include such concepts as “caring masculinities” (Hanlon 2012; Elliott 2016, 2020), “hybrid masculinities” (Bridges and Pascoe 2014; Eisen and Yamashita 2017), “inclusive masculinity theory” (Anderson 2009; Anderson and McCormack 2018) and clinical psychology accounts pertaining to “toxic masculinity” (Kupers 2005; Parent et al. 2019). From these competing gender taxonomies, it is argued that the concept of caring masculinities offers the most potential, in terms of refiguring gender relations and changing the gender order.

The article begins by exploring the reinvigoration of care as a meta-theory, for understanding human relationships. Care is a global issue, formative of masculinities and gender inequalities. As care relations are a fundamental axis upon which the sexual division of labor is produced in society, gender scholars have agitated for a “feminist theory of care” (Fisher and Tronto 1990; Held 2005), to undo masculinities (Elliott 2016; Hearn 2018; Warren 2022) and rethink care relations. Extending this approach, the paper argues for decolonial perspectives on care, that engage with the global migration of health workers, racial disparities in health provision, interdependencies between the global north and south, and inequalities underpinning neoliberal care practices.

The analysis then turns to appraising Connell’s (1987, 1995) promiscuous concept “hegemonic masculinity,” to explore why it has become such a fertile framework for understanding men and masculinities, some thirty years after its initial inception. Following this evaluation, the article examines the concept of “caring masculinities” which has emerged in critical dialogue with hegemonic masculinity and feminist theory (Hanlon 2012; Scambor, et al. 2014; Elliott 2016; Brandth and Kvande 2018). It is argued that care is of significance to CSMM as a means through which different masculinities and femininities are brought-into-being and come to be positioned through and against one another. Despite its appeal, I contend that accounts of caring masculinities need be situated through “material configurations of care.” This has significant bearing upon different men’s abilities to provide care when it comes to time, resources, opportunities and embodied competencies. Moreover, the paper demonstrates how care maybe incorporated into hegemonic masculinity. In such instances, rather than transform gender relations, care may serve to consolidate existing gender and colonizing practices. To avert this, I deploy a feminist-decolonial framework, reflexive to the constraints and possibilities for change. Finally, the article turns to pedagogy, policy and practice, putting “care theory” into “care practice” by mapping possibilities for transformation at local, national, and global scales.

Globalizing Care, Decolonizing Care: Feminist Care Perspectives

The coronavirus global pandemic has witnessed a reinvigorated approach to care. Chatzidakis et al. (2020, 889) declare care, “the buzzword of the moment” and it is said to have “reentered the zeitgeist” (Hobart and Kneese 2020,1). Care work may include a vast array of formal and informal activities, including childcare, elderly care, health care, domestic care, therapeutic care, self-care, nursing, and spousal care amongst other forms of caregiving (Fisher and Tronto 1990; Held 2005; Ruby and Sholz 2018). In this respect, rather than fixing the concept of care upon the elderly and infirm, this paper extends it, by recognizing the interwoven aspects of care in everyday life, where it appears as complex, contingent, multi-layered, and knotted activity that binds us each, to one another.

Critically, care is constituted through relations of power, operating as a vector in the sexual division of labor, demarcating men’s work from that of women. This means care is seen as “feminized” activity—low-paid, unpaid, part-time, and precarious labor (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003; Held 2005; Co-Author and Author 2022). Furthermore, the societal gendering of care means many women feel compelled to take on the role of primary caregivers. Here, “caring … is the constitutive activity through which women achieve their femininity and against which masculinity takes shape” (Graham 1983, 17). In contrast, ‘hegemonic practices amongst men are also about being care-free’ (Hanlon 2012, 22). The relational aspects of care, and how it operates to interpolate masculine and feminine subjectivities, remains a focus throughout.

Care is a global concern, core to the United Nation’s Global Sustainability Development Goals (UN GSDGs), but also reliant upon the transnational migration and movement of various health workers, knowledge and pharmaceuticals across time and space. Care is a profoundly gendered and raced concept (Bartos, 2019; Raghuram 2019; Sieler 2020). Decolonizing care means opening-up Western modernity and knowledge to the differently embodied experiences, encounters, and perspectives of Black, feminist, queer, Indigenous and minoritized people from around the world. Decolonization connects past colonial histories with contemporary geographies of care; makes gender, race, and class disparities central to care accounts; recognizes co-dependencies between the global north and south; illuminates the flow and circulation of migrant bodies to perform care in the global north; and acknowledges how modernity and whiteness is embedded in neo-colonial health practices, where race is an axis for the hierarchal organisation of international care regimes.

Material care technologies and therapeutic care practices are circulated around the world through an amalgam of “flows,” chains, and networks. Feminist-decolonial research on global care chains and therapeutic networks, has focused on women caregivers and the wider international division of labor, generating inequalities worldwide (Yeats 2004; Raghuram, Madge and Noxolo 2009; Kasper et al. 2019). This work demonstrates the ways in which global therapeutic networks and care practices are gendered, classed, and racialized at multiple intersecting scales. Research on global care chains demonstrates the “stretched out” geographies of care, through relations between the global north and south (Raghuram, Madge, and Noxolo 2009; Raghuram 2016). Global therapeutic networks further comprise the circulation of scientific knowledge, medical technologies, tissue samples, bodily organs, pharmaceuticals, and vaccines around the globe. The movement of human and non-human matter, including the “flow” of patients, service providers and material products are a feature of accelerated global therapeutic mobilities (Kasper et al. 2019), everyday “carescapes,” and postcolonial interdependencies.

Decolonial scholarship identifies the centrality of race in care relations (Näre 2010; Raghuram 2019; Prattes 2022), and the historically classed and racialized processes leading to “white care” (Sieler 2020) in the US being constituted as under threat by the prospect of “Obamacare,” via the Affordable Care Act (Lopez 2019). This impulse is felt where Elliott (2020) draws on black feminist scholar bell hooks to rethink care at the margins to include Black and working-class men. In consciously applying a decolonial framework, I draw attention to whiteness and the intersecting, and multi-scalar inequalities of neoliberal global care regimes. For example, in an insightful study of Sri Lankan domestic workers in Naples, Italy, Näre (2010, 70) discovered migrant cleaners were regarded as ‘asexual, submissive and docile’ despite being understood as traditional, patriarchal head of households in South Asia. This, I contend, is a product of their low-paid status, the gendering of work, and Orientalist depictions that have long-viewed South Asians as a “feminized race.” Because of the classed, gendered, racialized and hetero-patriarchal dimensions of caregiving, it is not surprising that scholars are agitating for an intersectional “ethics of care” (Fisher and Tronto 1990; Näre 2010; Lopez 2019; Raghuram 2019) that acknowledges economic disparities and social inequalities in global care regimes (England and Alcorn 2018).

Feminist research on caregiving has in large part focused upon the plight of women, including nurses, cleaners, au pairs, and domestic maids (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2003; Held 2005), with little attention afforded to men and masculinities. However, the migration, mobility and motility of male nurses is changing care practices internationally (Kaspar et al. 2019) and questioning how we might understand masculinity, care, and the body (England and Dyck 2014). In Italy Gallo and Scrinzi (2016) found upper-middle class male clients with family care needs would outsource “dirty work” to migrant care-workers across lines of class, gender, and ethnicity, thereby perpetuating capitalist hegemonic masculinity and reproducing the colonial division of labor. However, in the case of diasporic male nurses migrating from India to Canada, Walton-Roberts (2019) found male nursing is a low-paid stigmatized career for men in India. Whereas in Ontario male migrant nurses, often from Kerala, found full-time employment in technically advanced positions that could alleviate them from, “less well paid, “caring,” deep emotion and body work” (33), characterized by care for the elderly. On one hand this indicates a reliance on high-skilled migrants, while on the other discloses how even within the “feminized” sector of nursing, care can be “masculinized” through medical professionalization (Hanlon 2012), removal of emotional labor, and separation from bodily dirt and disease.

The rise of dual income households has not lessened the burden of care on women. In short, to progress gender equality, it is necessary that the concept of ‘caring masculinities’ is no longer an oxymoron. ‘Caring masculinities’ is said to be ripe with potential (Elliott 2020; Elliot 2016; Scambor et al. 2014; Sheibling 2018; Hearn 2018). I argue that for the concept to concertedly challenge inequalities it needs to be situated through a critical feminist-decolonial optic, alert to the multiple inequalities and material configurations of care outlined. In the following sections I aim to “stretch the boundaries of care” (Bartos 2019), primarily by critically engaging with masculinities, and, in particular ideas, of “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell 1987, 1995, Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), before turning to transnational practices of “caring masculinities” from men of different ages and backgrounds, with a focus on the white coloniality of care regimes.

Hegemonic Masculinity: Global, Relational, Plural, and Transformational

Raewyn Connell’s (1987, 1995) celebrated framework, pertaining to “hegemonic masculinity,” remains the most influential interpretation of men and gender power in feminist and CSMM. Since its inception, Connell’s (1987) pioneering term “hegemonic masculinity” has been ubiquitous in studies of masculinity, gender, and sexual inequalities (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), its popularity is described as “unparalleled,” and its influence “omnipresent” in CSMM (Beasely 2012, 753). Connell draws on Gramsci’s (1971) notion of cultural hegemony in which ruling classes govern by consent, dynamically negotiating and incorporating emergent forms of popular dissent to maintain a male power base. While Connell’s theorization of masculinities is subject to critique (Collier 1998; Demetriou 2001; Hearn 2004; Wetherell and Edley 1999; Beasley 2008, 2012), and further elaboration (Connell 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), hegemonic masculinity remains a particularly compelling concept (Wegewood 2009; Messerschmidt 2019).

To begin with, hegemonic masculinity illuminates the global scale of patriarchy where men hold power over women throughout most parts of the world. Here, the concept is much more than the actions of one individual against another, rather hegemonic masculinity involves the material institutionalization of highly particular forms of masculine practice, that can only be achieved through social structures—government, law, family, education, religion, military, labor market and media practices. To this extent Connell convincingly argues against “sex-role theory” in favor of the social construction of gender, and by implication, the societal making of masculinity. In this regard, hegemonic masculinity, far from being inevitable, is the “configuration of gender practice” (Connell 1995, 77), accomplished through social action. This enables us to view the global dominance of men over women not as biological, but as profoundly ideological. Hegemonic masculinity operates then, as a cultural framework for the production and reproduction of gender patterns across a grid of power.

Secondly, hegemonic masculinity is a relational concept in dialogue with various versions of “masculinity” and “femininity” (Nayak and Kehily 2013). As such, it offers much more than a simplistic gender binary but a relational means of producing the gender order through “patterns of practice” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 832). Here, power is not only enacted against women, but also by some men over other “subordinated masculinities”—for example, gay, effeminate, racialized, or unemployed men. The effect is that while only a minority of men may occupy hegemonic masculinity as a material and discursive position, it nevertheless operates as a desirable norm. To this extent hegemonic masculinity is the most valorized version of being a man; its gravitational force is felt where other forms of masculinity orbit around it, are pulled into its stratosphere, and thereby come to legitimate its hold as an organizing principle in late-modern societies.

Thirdly, masculinity must be understood as diverse and plural. Acknowledging how it intersects with age, class, ethnicity, region, sexuality, and other social variables, means it cannot pass as monolithic; rather it is rendered multiple, mutable and myriad in its contingent formation. Beyond the polarity of “dominant” and “subordinate” masculinities are then to be found other stratifications of gender. This includes “complicit masculinities,” men who do not necessarily embody hegemonic masculinity, but nevertheless benefit from its advantages, as part of the “patriarchal dividend” (Connell 1995: 79). Towards the other end of the spectrum are “marginalized masculinities,” encompassing men on the peripheries of society with relatively little social power, such as the unemployed, homeless, or physically impaired. While these men may still enact forms of violence and abuse against women and men, what Connell terms “protest masculinity” (ibid., 109), such expressions are rarely legitimated by society and the prevailing gender order. Indeed, in such enactments, the radius of power is often localized, self-destructive and, relatively speaking, structurally impotent.

Fourthly, Connell is interested in possibilities for gender transformation, turning to feminist and queer scholarship for inspiration. For Connell (1995, 232) it is here that we can mine opportunities for a “degendering strategy.” The hope being, “a more humane, less oppressive, means of being a man might become hegemonic, as part of a process leading toward an abolition of gender hierarchies” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 833). Historical transformation in what constitutes hegemonic masculinity reveals significant change across time and place. For example, English aristocrats in the early Restoration period of the seventeenth century replaced the military influence in men’s clothing with an excessively flamboyant Baroque style of dress, often accompanied with ornate embroidery, lengthy bouffant wigs, makeup, and highly decorative apparel. However, the chalk-white face powder and makeup could be used to hide war wounds, and the wigs, baldness. The prevailing gender order then reflects the culturally intelligible forms of hegemonic masculinity deemed most desirable at a given moment. This means, ‘[h]egemonic masculinity’ is not a fixed character type” but remains “a position always contestable” (Connell 1995, 76) and subject to a dynamic interplay of power, negotiation and reconfiguration.

Transnational Caring Masculinities: Younger Men, Older Men, and Material Configurations of Care

Recent years have witnessed growing interest in “caring masculinities,”, prominent in CSMM. “Caring masculinities” has emerged through dialogue with Connell’s (1995) “hegemonic masculinity” and longstanding engagements with feminist research on care (Graham 1983; Risman 1983; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003). However, “In contrast to feminist theory,” Ruby and Sholz (2018, 73) opine, “theories of masculinity barely reflect on care and care work.”. Emerging studies offer opportunities to address this, where for Elliott (2020, 1735), “Caring masculinities can be defined as masculinities that reject domination and associated patriarchal traits and incorporate instead ideals of care.” This nascent body of work encompasses conceptual, empirical, and policy-orientated investigation on caring masculinities; the primary objective being to enhance gender equality and disrupt dominating forms of masculinity.

Hanlon’s (2012) interviews with caregiving men in Ireland provides a rare empirical contribution, exploring men’s attitudes and practices of care. Significantly, care is seen as optional for men but obligatory for women. Hanlon found most men are not socialized into caregiving, felt they lacked nurturing skills, regard care as feminized activity, which in turn leads to gender subordination and loss of power. Utilizing feminist care theory and CSMM, Elliott (2016) offers a conceptual framing, arguing that men’s care can change gender relations, through a “practice-based” model focused on men’s caregiving practices. Subsequently, Elliott (2020) considers the significance of engaging with “marginal” masculinities to shift the locus of progress and change from the core to the periphery, challenging perceptions of white middle-class heterosexual men as harbingers for gender transformation. A further productive approach is found in work by Hearn and others, mapping policy change around masculinities, care, and gender equality (Scambor et al. 2014; Hearn 2018). Drawing on this, and further literature, I begin by highlighting the problematics of caring masculinities, focusing upon “material configurations of care” and the colonizing practices that give rise to intersecting inequalities. To circumvent this tendency, I then distil aspects of the caring masculinities thesis that have potential to transform the existing global gender order.

Caring Masculinities: Pedagogy, Policy, and Practice

The insights generated from research on male caregivers, is critical to understandings of gender and care. In North America Sheibling (2018) contends “dad bloggers” are reconstructing masculinities through collaborations with feminism, charities, and brand-marketing. Boyer et al. (2017) speculate that ongoing recession and male unemployment could lead to an increase in SAHDs, where male caregiving could transform gender relations. Such possibilities are an evident, though often overlooked, aspect of the coronavirus pandemic (Warren 2022). Media has focused on the rise in male domestic abuse during lock-down, with less attention given to improved family relations generated by men working from home, spending more time with children, and carrying out routine domestic tasks often undertaken by women. Within the UK, there are some signs men are rethinking care commitments, with a surge of “remote workers” emigrating from the city to reside in coastal and rural locations.

Elliott (2016, 241) argues “caring masculinities” is imbued with “the potential to change men and gender.” Since her generative article there have been some inroads by way of pedagogy, policy, and practice. According to Chatzidakis et al. (2020, 889) the coronavirus pandemic has stimulated a “discursive explosion” of care that has inflected public discourse. They argue this creates possibilities for an inclusive feminist project of care, that could be taught to boys at an early age, to “universalize care.” These ideas are put into practice in recent research with children in English Primary Schools, highlighting the value of men’s caregiving, demonstrating how it can be eclipsed by hegemonic masculinity, or reconfigure masculinities altogether (Co-author and Author 2022). In workshops at the annual Dad 2.0 Summit in North America care pedagogies offer ways of socializing boys and men (Sheibling 2018). In South Africa, Morrell and Jewkes maintain caring carves open pathways to gender equality, concluding, “men’s engagement in carework deserves to be an explicit goal of interventions aimed at ‘changing men’” (2011, 9). To this extent, caring masculinities has global reach and “real world” implications for gender transformation, where care equality has the potential to challenge, refigure and transform gender relations.

Indeed, gender equality is one of the 17 UN GSDGs (2021), detailing how the pandemic increases the “burden of unpaid domestic and care-work” upon women, further ostracizing them from the labor market. Hearn’s single and co-authored research exploring the development of supra-national policy frameworks of gender equality and “caring masculinities” in the European Union is instructive (Hearn 2018; Scambor et al. 2014). Reviewing a series of European reports, Scambor et al. (2014) identify a growing interest in engaging men in practices of gender equality, leading Hearn to argue that such policies, “are very much to do with care and caring” (2018, 29). In this sense, critical practices and policy on caring masculinities have the potential to impart regional and global influence upon multiple issues that connect to equality. This might include rethinking responsibilities for childcare, elderly care, domestic care, work-life balance, paternity leave, global care networks and the broader sexual division of labor.

Esquivel (2021) deems the institutionalization of care policies in Latin America and parts of the global south “transformative,” where rights, autonomy, wellbeing, and agency are achieved for caregivers and recipients. The impact of policy is further traced in Nordic countries, where extended paternity leave, with full-pay for 10 weeks, is deployed to encourage working fathers to be caregivers. Brandth and Kvande (2018, 73) maintain “policy has influenced the norms of fatherhood,” where “fathers are expected to use their leave quota and be more than simply family providers.” What this, and studies by Scambor et al. (2014) and Hearn (2018) make clear, is that policies on caring masculinities not only support gender equality on the world stage, including the global south (UN GSDGs 2021; Esquivel 2021; Morell and Jewkes 2011), but have benefits for men too, when it comes to health and wellbeing, improved spousal and familial relations, and the negation of risk-taking and violent acts, which has detrimental effects on men’s lives.

Ruby and Scholz (2018 79) remark how Elliot’s conception of caring masculinities is focused on men, yet there is pressing need to engage boys and younger generations (c.f. Bonner-Thompson and Nayak 2022; Nayak and Bonner-Thompson 2022). Indeed, there is evidence that a “practice-based model” (Elliott 2016) of care is beating a path towards mainstream school pedagogy, illustrated in the latest Department for Education (DfE) guidance for Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) in England and Wales (Nayak and Bonner-Thompson 2022). The guidance, updated since the pandemic, places a pronounced emphasis upon practicing care. The rubric contains sections on, “Families and people who care for me,” and recognizes the intimate value of “Caring friendships” (DfE 2020), an area of mutual reciprocity that may offer new pathways for caring masculinities (Ruby and Scholz 2018). The guidelines for Primary Schools state that children should understand their mental wellbeing and physical health, be able to communicate about their own and others” feelings and learn to practice self-care techniques. This is a significant step forward, where classroom issues of health were individualized, focusing on bodily health, the benefits of dietary nutrition, exercise, and sleep.

Despite these welcome early interventions, there is sparse engagement with the neo-colonial gendered inequality of care regimes and the need to target young men specifically with pedagogies of “caring masculinities.” As Connell (1995, 239) previously remarked, “there is little discussion, informed by research on masculinity, about education for boys in modern mass schooling systems; let alone the principles that would include girls as well as boys in an educational process addressing masculinity.” This is still largely the case, certainly in the UK. Indeed, in the fifty-page government guidance for RSE (DfE 2020), there is no mention of masculinity. The closest we get to any engagement, is in advice to teachers concerning on- and off-line sexual harassment. The guidance imparts that, “assumptions are not made about the behavior of boys and young men and that they are not made to feel that this behavior is an inevitable part of being male,” followed by the rejoinder, “most young men are respectful of young women and each other” (DfE 2020, 14).

Clearly, there is some way to go. However, for scholars working in CMMS, feminist, queer and gender studies, such pioneering initiatives are a landmark moment. The focus on emotions, wellbeing, caring friendships, as well as the intimate aspects of care relationships, dovetail with a feminist collective ethics of care and a move to a “Careful World” (Ruby and Scholz 2018). This could extend to encompass a decolonial approach, tracing and privileging “southern knowledge” as the genesis for many contemporary bodily care techniques, including meditation, mindfulness, yoga, herbal remedies, acupuncture or reflexology. In ethnography with young people in English Primary Schools, we disclose how boys orientate themselves through and against care relations, which are productive of different types of masculinities. Weather young men are caring, careless or carefree, reveals differing dispositions to gender and masculinity. The research further found men’s care could be “recuperated” into the existing patriarchy to augment traditional notions of masculinity—for example the male “breadwinner”—or “redistributed” in ways that disrupt the prevailing gender order (Bonner-Thompson and Nayak 2022). Understanding how, when and where the practice of “masculinizing care” (Jordan 2018) may occur, or not, is pivotal to progressing policy, pedagogies, and practice on caring masculinities.

Conclusion: “Decolonizing” and “Degendering” Care

The paper takes forward research on masculinities in a series of ways. Firstly, it offers critical appraisal of the conceptual resilience of Connell’s “hegemonic masculinity” to understand its longevity in CMMS and gender studies. It is argued its success rests with the ability to: address male dominance at local, regional, and global scales; disclose masculinity as a social, historical, and relational category; emphasize multiple, diverse, and competing forms of masculinity; and open out masculinity to feminist and queer critiques, with a view to elicit potential transformations in the gender order.

In contrast, caring masculinities have “been insufficiently theorized and barely been investigated empirically” (Ruby and Scholz 2018, 81), indicating further scholarship is required if the concept is to travel beyond CSMM in the way hegemonic masculinity has (Beasley 2012; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). While Elliott (2016) considers caring masculinities as transformative for gender relations, what little empirical evidence there is, is nuanced; signalling complexity, ambiguities, and diversity in men’s caregiving practices, though this does not rule out the potential for change (Hanlon 2012; Milligan and Morbey 2016; McLean 2021). Asking if male care-work leads to gender equality Morell and Jewkes (2011, 30) conclude, “Our answer in this paper is both yes and no,” reflecting how some, but not all men, refigured masculinity. In research on young recipients of care Bonner-Thompson and Nayak (2022, 1252) acknowledged, “ambiguous results where care is an unstable, diffuse and flexible felt practice.” This suggests caring masculinities can be a path to liberation, but “it is equally important to be aware that they do not have to be” (Ruby and Scholz 2018, 79).

Secondly, rather than conceive of “caring masculinities” and “hegemonic masculinity” as fixed typologies, where the former is the antithesis of the latter (Elliott 2016, 254), they are instead, material and social constructs, embodied through gender practices. Moreover, it is possible for hegemonic masculinity to incorporate care into the patriarchal order, extending rather than unsettling male authority. This suggests that there are times when the “radical” potential of care (Hobart and Kneese 2020) risks being recuperated, refigured (Bonner-Thompson and Nayak 2022), masculinized (Jordan 2018; Hunter et al. 2017), whitened and colonized (Sieler 2020; Prattes 2022). This remains a key issue that future research on caring masculinities needs to be attentive to.

Thirdly, by considering care as meta-theory, I utilize an intersectional feminist-decolonial framework as a critical optic through which to view global care practices, highlighting their multi-scalar, intersecting inequalities. In doing so, neoliberal ideologies that result in “carewashing” (Chatzidakis et al. 2020) and colonial practices of “whitewashing,” are made transparent and laid bare for critique (Sieler 2020; Lopez 2019). The repertoire reconfigures power by focusing on care interdependencies between the global north and its southern counterparts. This is evident not only in the transnational migration of doctors, nurses, caregivers, and other healthcare service providers, but also in the circulation and “flows” of knowledge, technologies, human and non-human matter around the globe. Caring masculinities cannot be abstracted out from these “uneven” postcolonial interdependencies, to do so whitens the concept (Prattes, 2022). Instead, decolonizing care puts race inequalities at the heart of these interrelations, globally situating our everyday “carescapes.” This may further generate ways of doing caring masculinities that displace whiteness as the “master trope“ of fatherhood (Poeze 2019; Prattes 2022), care and caregiving (Näre 2010; Gallo and Scrinzi 2016; Morell and Jewkes 2011; McLean, 2021).

Fourthly, the concept of “material configurations of care” is utilized, revealing how this may work to impede or mobilize caring masculinities. This is less about whether individual men occupy “open” or “closed” masculinities (Elliott 2020) but the material framework enabling this. Thus, transnational accounts indicate that changes in parental leave, childcare support, education, and policy initiatives on care may greatly enhance gender equality, facilitating spaces for caring masculinities to proliferate (Brandth and Kvande 2018; Esquivel 2021; Scambor et al. 2014; Hearn 2018). Growing interest in workplace wellbeing, extended paternity leave, strategies for homeworking and work-life balance, offer productive avenues for shifting gender relations. However, material configurations have also seen neoliberal care regimes commodify care, relegating public health to the responsibility of individual households and private agencies. The redistribution of care and the impact of austerity, precarity and the pandemic, mean unemployed, working-class, and elderly men are increasingly likely to be involved in caregiving (Hunter et al. 2017; Milligan and Morbey 2016; Tarrant 2018; Warren 2022). Contrastingly, middle- and upper-class households may outsource care to migrant laborers, reinscribing hegemonic masculinity and white coloniality.

The paper indicates that policy and material configurations of care are pivotal to the bringing-into-being of subjectivities and the making of caring, uncaring, and careless masculinities. Policy and pedagogy create the infrastructure through which change can occur, while material configurations mark out the challenges and possibilities for caring masculinities to “rework” the gender order. In the shadow of the coronavirus global pandemic, it remains to be seen if international governments, organizations, and institutions pursue caring masculinities as “a concept whose time has come” (Hearn 2018, 41), or let slip the opportunity for a radical, global, restructuring of care relations.