Everyday gendered performances at home: Masculine domesticity?

Hande Eslen-Ziya,Hale Bolak Boratav,Güler Okman Fişek

doi:10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100112

Hande Eslen-Ziya, Hale Bolak Boratav + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100112

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Abstract

This article explores how men living in Istanbul talk about the sociality of house and care work – vacuuming the house, cooking, doing the laundry – in their everyday lives. It shows how these tasks are crucial for understanding contemporary Turkish men and how they are intertwined with notions of masculinity. This research is part of a larger study conducted between 2008 and 2010 across Turkey exploring the negotiation of masculine subjectivities by married men. Overall, the men’s narratives indicated a relationship in transition with both their children and their wives, where dilemmas and contradictions were presented with the emerging modernist discourse of egalitarianism (Boratav, Fişek, Eslen-Ziya 2017 and 2014). In this paper, such dilemmas reflected in the egalitarianism discourse between the genders are studied in relation to the division of labour within the household. While the data were collected before the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe that the existing trends in so-called ordinary days will enable us to understand the extent to which gender roles are either challenged or re-constructed at home during extraordinary times.

Highlights

This article explores how men living in Istanbul talk about the sociality of house and care work – vacuuming the house, cooking, doing the laundry – in their everyday lives
Domestic masculinities on the other hand take into account the multiple masculinities perspective developed by Connell (1987, 1992) and study how men interact with the domestic space in different cultural frameworks
Several years after the in-depth interviews were conducted, the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic

Summary

Introduction

This article explores how men living in Istanbul talk about the sociality of house and care work – vacuuming the house, cooking, doing the laundry – in their everyday lives. “I clean the whole house, and if someone gets in my way, I get really annoyed” (Bora), said a 57-year-old male university graduate who lived with his wife and two children, while a 52-year-old male university graduate proudly announced that he could fill the dishwasher very well and that his table setting was good (Cemal) These are only two instances of household work that came up during the in-depth exploration of the negotiation of masculine subjectivities by married men in Istanbul. While we are fully aware of the need for an intersectional analysis, our main focus in this paper is on men’s experiences, and less on issues related to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or physical ability In this respect, this paper explores reflections of the domestic space, acts of doing and undoing gender by our participants, and their dilemmas as well as their experiences at home

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