Men Provide, Women Care?

Reflections on the Significance of Socio-Cultural Constructions of the Sex Binary for Identity Constructions of Older German Men

Post-Doc-Projekt von Lisa-Nike Bühring

Patriarchy still represents the socio-politico systems which underlies a majority of western societies. A constituting premise sustaining patriarchal power relations is the separation and categorisation of human beings into only two sexes. By constructing the sex binary as natural and by linking masculinity to aspects such as strength, rationality, and control and femininity to attributes such as passivity, submission, and empathy, patriarchy is defined as representing the natural order of things which legitimates its rule. Despite the fact that in recent decades academics and practitioners alike have highlight the reductionist and largely inaccurate nature of the binary sexual construction in the West, the sex binary and linked heterosexuality are tirelessly reproduced and established by powerful socio-cultural agents such as the media, educational and political institutions or the law as the normative standard. This view of the gender binary, linked gender-specific attributes and resulting gender hierarchies continue to inform dominant socio-cultural narratives of ageing which is evident in the double standards applied in the public appraisal of successful respectively unsuccessful ageing of men and women transmitted in the media, politics or legal institutions.

One of the significant findings of my previous research has been that older men who used to fulfil many of the criteria linked to constructions of hegemonic masculinity, majorly rely on their prior perception of masculinity to build a positive identity in older age. Given the relationality and interdependence of constructions of femininity and masculinity, exploring further how views of gender roles characterising earlier stages in men's lives have on the development of their older identities could facilitate deeper insights into the processes involved in the embodiment of gender throughout the life-course. This could subsequently support changes in the still prevalent and powerful constructions of the male/female divide which underlies patriarchy. Consequently, in my current project I aim at deepening and expanding my understanding of identity constructions in older male age by exploring older German men's lives who due to their sexual orientation and/or economic status belong to marginalised groups. This should enable gaining more insight into how definitions and embodiments of masculinity affect the identity construction of (German) men in older age.

Keywords: ageing, masculinity, socio-cultural narratives

Lisa-Nike Bühring
Lisa has recently submitted her PhD to the University of Gloucestershire, UK. Her research focusses on the perception of ageing in neoliberal society, on the analysis of the socio-cultural frames of ageing and masculinity communicated in Hollywood (action) films and on gaining a better understanding of how these narratives affect older men.
At the moment, she is a freelance lecturer for a variety of subjects, including qualitative research methods and media psychology at private business universities in Germany. While her passion for teaching remains unbroken, she is also increasingly motivated by her interest in the socially and culturally constructed narratives which influence our lives in a neoliberal society.
Lisa, therefore, pursues her development as an early career researcher actively. She has just been accepted by the University of Newcastle’s Gender Research Group as an applicant for the Marie Sklodowska Curie Action Individual Fellowship and has recently contributed an entry to the Encyclopedia of Gender, Media and Communication to be published by Wiley shortly. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Extreme Anthropology and a member of the Centre for Women, Ageing and Media (WAM), the European Network in Ageing Studies (ENAS), Ageing + Communication + Technologies (ACT) and the North American Network of Ageing Studies (NANAS).