Customer Reviews

Masculinities in Organizations (SAGE Series on Men and Masculinity)

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This was an informative, intersectional analysis combining men's studies and organizational behavior. The anthology has a nice range in topics. Michael Messner once wrote that women, generally, are more interested in men's studies than men, so it is not surprising that slightly more women than men contributed chapters to this work. Do know that two of the nine chapters are printed in the Fourth Edition of "Men's Lives."

Gender studies scholarship maintains that gender affects everything. For those that believe that claim, as I do, this book helps spell unique ways in which this occurs. However, this book will frustrate those who do not believe that claim. In one chapter, the author says men take risks and that masculine drive may have played a role in the 1986 Challenger explosion. Others would say greed and poor planning caused that, not masculinity. One chapter said perhaps women don't enter the computer industry when users employ language like "aborting" programs. Political fights over abortion, some would say, have nothing to do with the semantics that "to abort" means "to halt anything in progress." Skeptics of gender studies should be warned.

Each chapter cites and supports the work of R.W. Connell. For examples, the contributors take as a given that there are multiple masculinities, not just one. They contrast the masculinity of engineers versus businessmen, Americans versus foreigners, and white men versus Asian men. This differs radically from Lisa Lindsay's "Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa" in which each chapter challenges Connell. The book is daring in writing that "masculinities can be performed by women and men" rather than stating "masculinities can be performed by men and women." I loved the irony and gender-transgression of that statement.