User:Clarynt1/Masculinity

Overview
When men do not embody strength, courage, interdependence, leadership, and assertiveness, it can cause men to struggle with their gender identity. Masculinity affects gender identity and men's behavior. When women’s labor participation increased, there were who felt less comfortable in their masculinity because it was increasingly difficult for them to assert reconfirm their status as the breadwinner.

East African Cultures
During Margrethe Silberschmidt's research of urban and rural men in East Africa, she concludes that men experience disempowerment when they cannot not fulfill their role as breadwinner and feel inferior to women when they cannot provide for their family. The changes in East Africa's cultural and economic framework can partially be attributed to British colonial rule because it altered the gender division of labor. There was an increase in wage labor which led to a demand for more skilled workers in an environment where there were primarily unskilled workers. Eventually, there was a shift to growing cash crops and the emphasis was put on men to be the breadwinner. A man's social value is traditionally connected to his ability to provide so when he can no longer do that, it negatively impacts his ego. Masculinity is seen as an entity to be protected, and when a man feels disempowered, he finds other ways to reaffirm their masculinity. Research that examines the struggles among men and look into their personal experiences can help to understand the social structures of masculinity.

Household Effects
Households require unpaid labor to run. Women and girls provide an estimated 75% of unpaid labor globally, with 42% of women unable to participate in paid labor because caregiving responsibilities. Indira Hirway backs this statement up by explaining “unpaid work is highly unequal in its distribution between men and women, with women shouldering the main burden, in terms of participation as well as the time spent on unpaid work”. A study in Turkey was done on household labor participation which gathered comments from the participants including one respondent who said: "Men are responsible for outside, and women from the home. Men think about the livelihood of their home and children...the man brings, the woman cooks". Using data from Spain, Javier Cerrato and and Eva Cifre also find that: "traditional gender roles still affect the way men and women manage the work and family interactions." .