The Politics of Men's Health: Contested Masculinities and Strategies of Change (original) (raw)
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Men’s rights or men’s needs? Anti-feminism in Australian men’s health promotion
In a significant shift over the last ten years, Australian men’s rights activists (MRAs) have partnered with academics and health groups to rearticulate notions of injured masculinity via the vocabulary and practice of health promotion. Health promotion is defined by the World Health Organisation as ‘the process of enabling people to increase control over their health and its determinants, and thereby improve their health’.1 In Australia, health promotion typically incorporates both social and ecological models of health, including a focus on the link between social inequality, health care utilisation and the broader determinants of health. In their appropriation of health promotion, MRAs promote a discourse of masculine suffering in which health statistics and theories of social causation legitimate ongoing attacks on feminism and women’s services. This has been a successful strategy in attracting support for misogynist sentiments that, when formulated in explicitly ideological terms, had come to imperil the mainstream acceptability of the men’s rights movement. This paper discusses the shifts in Australian MRA discourse and strategy from men’s ‘rights’ to men’s ‘needs’ and suggests reasons for concern about the role of MRAs in Australian men’s health policy.
Proof, 2009
In lieu of an abstract here is the start of the essay: This essay looks at the en-gendered nature of magazines. It assesses changes in the landscape of magazine publishing, despite many formal continuities of subject matter, and attempts to situate lifestyle publications for men, in particular Men’s Health , as part of this changed landscape. Men’s Health, first published in the UK in February 1995, is now the best-selling monthly men‟s magazine after 15 years of sales growth.
Journal of Men's Health, 2011
Gender, the complex of social relations and practices attached to biological sex, is one of the most important socio-cultural factors influencing health and health-related behavior. Although a large body of health research suggests that men with similar social disadvantages as women experience poorer health outcomes in relation to disability, chronic illness, injury rates and mortality, men's health is rarely deconstructed through the lens of gender. The purpose of this article is to increase understanding of the ways in which masculinities intersect with other social determinants of health creating health disparities among men, and to provide direction for masculine affirming health interventions aimed specifically at men. With the goal of promoting the health of men and decreasing health disparities, the authors have developed, within the Canadian context, an innovative theoretical framework for men's health, Health, Illness, Men and Masculinities (HIMM), based on the influence of masculinity throughout the lifecourse. We discuss three main phases of men's lifecourse showing how masculinity intersects with other social determinants of health differently during youth, middle-age and the older years. The HIMM Framework points to the need for research and theory development that moves us beyond a limited focus on any one individual man to consider men's health and illness practices in the larger social context within which masculinity is defined and produced. It can thus advance men's health research and theory development, and provide direction for policy, education, health care delivery and health promotion initiatives aimed specifically at men in many locales, contexts and countries.
‘Respect for each gender’: Gender, equity and backlash in Australia’s male health policy
Australian Journal of Social Issues, 2018
Australia is one of the few countries which has specific health policies for boys/men and girls/women as distinct groups. In this article I present an analysis of the discourses of gender, equity and disadvantage drawn upon in Australia’s men’s health policy. Through comparison with the women’s health policy, I show that a dual focus on the essential differences between men and women and the ways in which the health system has failed men contributes to an adversarial gender politics, positioning men and women as rivals with competing needs. Reflecting broader debates concerning the negative impact of societal change on boys/men, I argue that, in its current form, Australia’s health policy both taps into and, crucially, legitimises backlash politics, enabling it to ‘pass’ as sound public policy.