Perception of masculinity amongst young Malaysian men: a qualitative study of university students.

Zahra Fazli Khalaf,Effat Merghati Khoei,Behzad Ghorbani,Wah Yun Low

doi:10.1186/1471-2458-13-1062

Abstract

BackgroundPerception of Masculinity plays an important role in men’s lifestyles and health behaviors. Although, the importance of masculinity has been widely discussed in men’s health literature, very little is known about the meanings of masculinity in the Malaysian setting. This research aimed to explore the meanings of masculinity among Malaysian university men.MethodsThis qualitative study utilized in-depth interviews with 34 young Malaysian university men, aged 20–30 years from three main ethnic groups in Malaysia (Malay, Chinese and Indian). Thematic analysis approach was used to extract data. NVIVO v8 qualitative software was used for data management.ResultsFrom the data collected several concepts emerged that reflected the meanings of masculinity from the participants’ view points. These meanings were associated with a combination of traditional and non-traditional norms that generally benefit men who behave according to culturally dominant role expectations. These included: “Having a good body shape”, “being respected”, “having success with women”, “being a family man”, and “having financial independence”. Socio-cultural factors, such as family environment, religion, public media and popular life style patterns helped to shape and reinforce the meanings of masculinities among university men.ConclusionsThis study revealed that the university context provided a particular culture for construction and reinforcement of the meanings of masculinities, which should be considered by the educators to help in development of healthy masculinities.

Highlights

Perception of Masculinity plays an important role in men’s lifestyles and health behaviors
Given the purpose of the study and its research questions, as well as the fact that the concept of masculinity is a phenomenon that has not been fully explored among Malaysian university men, we applied qualitative research as the methodological approach for collecting data
The findings of this study are presented under the heading Meanings of Masculinity, which depicts gender-related beliefs and attitudes among the participants

Summary

Introduction

Perception of Masculinity plays an important role in men’s lifestyles and health behaviors. The importance of masculinity has been widely discussed in men’s health literature, very little is known about the meanings of masculinity in the Malaysian setting. Construction of gender within the society creates different patterns of expectation for both men and women, which lead to different behaviors and risks [1,2,3]. Whereas, according to the ‘gender role strain paradigm’, masculinity is not a fixed entity and there is no single standard for this concept [2,23,24]. In other words, this paradigm considers masculinity ‘ideologies’ rather than masculinity ‘ideology’. Gender norms are powerfully affected by the society and culture, and sociocultural changes influence people’s understanding of roles in personal, interpersonal, and social contexts [25]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion