Scrambling in the ruins of patriarchy: Neo-liberalism and men’s divided interests in gender change

Abstract

Twenty years ago the U.S. sociologist Goode (1982) published an essay “Why men resist”, reflecting on men’s responses to the women’s liberation movement. This remains one of the best appraisals of men’s interests in relation to gender change. Men resisted change, Goode argued, because they were the privileged group in gender relations, but this privilege was offset in a number of ways, and cross-cut by the interests men shared with particular women (e.g., wives and daughters). Challenging the idea of a “backlash”, Goode offered evidence that men’s attitudes (in the USA at least) had become increasingly favourable to gender equality. However, this was not put into practice evenly; men were losing their cultural centrality, but in relation to jobs and housework, were successfully resisting change. Ultimately an economic dynamic prevailed: “the underlying shift is towards the decreasing marginal utility of males” - accounting both for men’s resistance to gender equality, and for the futility of this resistance. The socio-economic forces now in play would continue to push modem society towards gender equality.