Male Privilege Research Articles

Flâneuserie of "In Treatment"’s Laila Green:

The Parisian flâneur is a figure whose indulgent urban loitering is shaped by straight white male privilege. In contrast, this essay introduces the concept of the Blackqueer flâneuse, highlighting the radical imagination’s role in maneuvering through heavily surveilled and controlled spaces. By weaving together intersecting theories of waywardness (Hartman) and willfulness (Ahmed), it examines Black flâneuserie —both as an imaginative and tangible mode of mobility— that ingeniously subverts or sidesteps the violence of capture. Focusing on Laila Green, from the series In Treatment (2021), the essay unveils her outlaw imagination, her yearning for liberation, and her everyday practices of wandering as alternative expressions of flâneuserie. Employing the concept of queer failure (Halberstam), the analysis frames Laila’s persistent attempts at escape alongside her history of facing setbacks as a practice of flâneuserie. With the help of critical geography (de Certeau, Tuan, Cosgrove, Cosgrove and Dora) and Jungian theory, it conceptualizes Laila’s passion for high places and mountains and ultimately the realization of her passion as evidence of her individuation. Akin to the paradoxes of white male flânerie, Black flâneuserie in Laila’s case unfolds as a paradoxical journey of self-discovery, complicated by her privilege and the entanglements of her wanderings within the logic of racial capitalism.

Calling out Feminists: Antifeminist Hijacking of Cancel Culture in South Korea

This paper examines the antifeminist appropriation of cancel culture in South Korea, focusing on the controversy surrounding the finger-pinching motif, allegedly associated with Megalia, a now-defunct feminist online community. While cancel culture originated from marginalized groups challenging systemic injustices, it is now appropriated by dominant groups to reinforce social structures—in this case, to protect male privilege and undermine feminism. The study reveals how antifeminist canceling in the country has extended over the years beyond subcultural industries to companies, government agencies, and public institutions. Although both feminists and antifeminists engage in cancel practices, antifeminist canceling has led to the removal of numerous advertisements and the sanctioning of women and precarious workers, reflecting the fundamental gender power imbalance in South Korea. By examining social, public, and institutional responses, I argue that such institutional enforcement upholds and reproduces the antifeminist hijacking of cancel culture, further silencing marginalized communities.

Anti‐egalitarianism motivates denial of male privilege

AbstractMen are privileged economically, politically, and socially, yet some deny this. Previous research suggests that denial of privilege can help to manage the discomfort associated with a privileged identity, but we propose that it serves primarily to preserve privilege. In two preregistered studies (Ntotal = 911 Australian participants) we show that denial of male privilege is not unique to men and that it is strongly predicted by anti‐egalitarianism, even when controlling for gender and other variables known to predict attitudes toward inequality (facets of right‐wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation). In Study 1, a multiple regression model accounted for 59% of the variability in reported male privilege awareness, with anti‐egalitarianism contributing 47% of the explanatory power. In Study 2, the explanatory power of anti‐egalitarianism was more modest (26%) and similar to that of gender (27%), and both also positively predicted claims of female privilege. This suggests that rather than simply reflecting unawareness of male privilege or being a way to manage a privileged identity, denying the existence of male privilege and claiming that women are privileged helps to preserve gender inequality by presenting it as a just result of meritocracy.

Gender quotas are not enough: the need for multiple strategies to address gender equity in Australian universities

ABSTRACT The paper examines a ‘circulatory’ system of gender inequity in Australian universities where gender bias prevents women from accessing senior decision-making roles and stultifies their capacity to act as gender change agents. It has been mooted that equity quotas for senior roles can derail this circuit of male privilege in academia. Yet a plastic reading of the shape of gender equity policy and practice in Australian universities over the last 40 years reveals an increasing acceptance of individualism, which positions women’s liberation as being achievable through self-responsibilisation. If these discourses remain unchallenged, gender quotas for senior roles alone will likely only benefit those entrepreneurial women admitted to senior positions, rendering the causes of gender inequity hidden and exonerated. Using a novel methodology that combines a ‘plastic’ with a complex systems lens of policy manoeuvres, we suggest gender quotas, accompanied by strategy designed to develop leaders’ gender competency and change agency, are required to support more sustainably equitable work structure within the academy.

Vocational Experiences of Korean Women With a High School Diploma: Insights into Work Precarity and Social Marginalization

A college education is a means to achieve upward social mobility and secure decent employment. Yet, college education tends to be accessible for families already part of privileged groups, such as those with financial resources. With attention to systemic oppression and varying degrees of access to education and employment, this study aims to describe the experiences of job-seeking and working among Korean women with a high school diploma as their highest educational attainment. The psychology of working theory, the work precarity framework, and intersectionality informed the study, exploring interview data from 13 Korean women. Findings from the reflective thematic analysis show that struggles in seeking and maintaining employment among the participants were particularly exacerbated by mistreatment, harassment, and disrespect due to having neither college degrees nor male privilege. Participants’ experiences with economic deprivation, lack of societal support and respect, and precarious work conditions led to psychological, social, and physical pain that went neglected. As they confront barriers to employment and undesirable work conditions, they affirm themselves and express the hope that the work society should better meet their fundamental needs as humans. Future research directions and practical implications are discussed.

#MeToo in Poland: reactions to public accusations of sexual violence

ABSTRACT As in many other countries, the #MeToo movement in Poland brought forth a wave of accusations of various forms of sexual violence. In this article, we analyze public statements of men accused of sexual violence in order to explore their constructions of gendered power relations and expose the internal logic of male privilege. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, we distinguish five discursive repertoires employed in the statements: new facts, the real victim, the decent feminist, good reputation, and explicit stigmatization. We argue that our discursive repertoires are similar to strategies extracted in different cultural contexts, thus indicating common connections across cultures in how male privilege operates. We have also observed characteristics specific to the Polish context, including the high importance of the supposed neutrality of the law in the debate around #MeToo and the predominant use of the good reputation repertoire to enhance credibility of privileged men. Given the specificity of the material analyzed and the exploration of the logic of privilege and misogyny, this article aims to contribute to efforts to counter harmful narratives about sexual violence that are prevalent in many countries.

How CEOs can Increase Public Engagement via Microblogs: The Role of CEO Gender and Content Orientation

AbstractIn the social media era, Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are increasingly using microblogging sites to communicate with the public. Drawing on schema‐congruity theory and gender egalitarianism, we investigate how CEO gender and work–life content orientation interact to influence public engagement with CEOs on microblogs. Using China as our research setting, we conduct a content analysis of data collected from 63 high‐profile CEOs’ microblogs and four laboratory studies with some 2000 respondents. Our results show that for female CEOs, work‐related content leads to greater engagement than life‐related content; for male CEOs, the effect is reversed. We find that such outcomes are driven by the incongruity between stereotypical gender roles and content orientation, which enhances perceived novelty and audience interest, thus leading to greater engagement. This effect diminishes when the audience has a very high or very low perception of gender equality in their society; or when the audience supports male privilege values personally. Our research provides new theoretical insights for online leadership communication, public engagement and gender research. It also offers useful managerial guidance for executives to effectively leverage the capabilities of social media in engaging with the public.

‘They Want Our Culture, Not Our Struggle’: Race and Gender Inequalities in Music, Sports, and Hollywood

When it comes time to disagree that White male privilege exists, insisting race and gender equity is already achieved, deniers often point to prominent people of color in sports and entertainment industries. Famous figures like Oprah Winfrey, Beyonce Knowles, Jay-Z, and Lebron James may, with cursory glance, give impression that—even if fields like finance, technology, medicine, law, and politics have glass ceilings—the entertainment field provides a seemingly utopian space where the playing field has already been leveled, and the so-called American Dream of race and gender equality has assumedly arrived. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, from primary and secondary sources, we look beyond token big names to overall patterns in music, professional sports, and film arenas to document how racial and gender inequality continue to stratify entertainment industries. Our analysis demonstrates that women and people of color are conditionally accepted, at best, to entertain, provided they stay in their proverbial place—seldom owning, directing, or taking the lead, and penalized when speaking out about oppression. We end with recommendations on how to shatter glass ceilings, like inclusion riders and Rooney Rule, along with other ways to bring more women and people of color into more powerful positions in these industries.

‘We’ve got this policy, now what?’ The security politics of implementing the Family Protection Law in Jordan

In this article, I bring together scholarship from feminist international relations and comparative gender politics to investigate how and why Jordan has implemented its policy addressing domestic violence, the 2008 Family Protection Law. Through a qualitative case study, I find that implementation is partial. Aspects of the policy that elevate Jordan’s status in the international arena and sustain domestic male privilege are implemented. Attempts at implementing aspects of the policy that grant greater autonomy to women are met with intense opposition, which is justified on the basis of preserving state stability. Taken together, this article demonstrates how international pressure and national security (i.e., state-centric) practices combine with domestic conservatism to produce unintended consequences: ineffective violence against women policies that are minimally implemented. The analysis adds nuance to both the feminist international relations and comparative gender politics literatures by demonstrating how domestic gender policymaking processes are influenced by national and international security politics.

What's colour got to do with it? A psychometric assessment of Peggy McIntosh's white privilege

AbstractPeggy McIntosh's (White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies, Working Paper 189, Wellesley Center for Research on Women, 1988) list of 50 racial privileges, which purportedly benefit persons of white skin colour, has had enormous impact on social science research and educational curriculum and pedagogy. Surprisingly, to date, no attempt has been made to empirically explore the validity and reliability of her list of racial privileges. To address this issue, we conducted a psychometric analysis on McIntosh's list of racial privileges with 204 adult Australian university students. Using a combination of factor analyses and Rasch modelling on McIntosh's list of racial privileges we identified a 27‐item multidimensional scale consisting of three well‐functioning and reliable subscales (i.e. a 15‐item Racial Representation, a six‐item Social Interaction and a six‐item Culture and Politics subscale). Moreover, the derived multi‐dimensional white privilege instrument was found to have good criterion validity in that persons’ experiences of racism significantly predicted white privilege (i.e. the more racism experienced the less white privilege experienced and vice versa). Finally, analysis of variance comparisons indicated that persons with white skin colour had significantly more white privilege than persons with black skin colour and Asians, while Asians had more white privilege than persons with black skin colour. Overall, this study presents evidence of a psychometrically valid and reliable 27‐item multi‐dimensional white privilege instrument and lends empirical support to the theoretical underpinnings of McIntosh's contentions.

A union's and university's responses to violence against a woman professor: Neoliberal restructuring, hypermasculinity, male privilege and hegemonic inequality

AbstractAlthough Eastern Canadian liberal arts universities are portrayed as progressive work environments that cultivate inclusivity and diversity, the corporatisation of these public spaces has transformed them from institutions that once encouraged pluralism and acceptance among all social groups to spaces that unevenly distribute privileges among faculty and students based on ascribed characteristics, social class, and adherence to cisnormative and heteronormative expectations. Under neoliberal reforms, universities and unions adopt their own policies and procedures that legitimate institutional power abuse over marginalised women Contract Limited Term (CLT) assistant professors. Using material evidence from complaints filed with a province's Human Rights Commission and Labour Board, this critical autoethnographic case study explores the institutionalised responses to a disenfranchised woman CLT's discrimination and harassment by a student, departmental chair, faculty and university staff. A theory of genocidal mobbing is developed to conceptualise the organisational processes and practices that maintain the status quo of white heteropatriarchy and disentitle women CLTs to safety, equality and fair representation by their unions. Genocidal mobbing is efficient, because misogynistic administrators only require weaponising one disgruntled student, and effective, because administrators utilise the most fatal and insidious of gendered narcissistic abuse: gaslighting. The current neoliberal climate within academia puts marginalised women faculty at increased risk of genocidal mobbing from those with institutional power and from students with ethnic/racial and/or economic privilege. This article illuminates the union's culpability in the genocidal mobbing of women CLTs disenfranchised by multiple marginalised intersectional identities. Implications for future research and on policy are presented.

The Portrayal of Women in Park Chan-wook’s Films— Using Decision To Leave as an Example

The “patriarchy” that has developed throughout Korean history, and human civilization as a whole, has lasted for millennia. This systematic, structured and unjust system of male domination over women has conferred a higher status, value and privilege on men. These institutions and behaviours form the conceptual framework of sexism, and at the heart of patriarchy is the maintenance and rationalisation of male privilege and power. Several of Park Chan-wook’s highly representative women’s films in recent years have stood up to observe society from a woman’s point of view, creating a new image of women. This essay takes director Table Chan-wook’s latest work, The Resolution to Break up, as an example, and discusses the image of women in Park Chan-wook’s films. Park Zan- wook creates a special and tense female image with the highly contrasting character of Song Seo-rae. Furthermore, he uses this unique female figure as a leading narrative to create a film that highly combines romance, thriller and suspense. As well as the main character Song Seo-rae, a typical oriental woman, she shows the consciousness of women’s self-awareness in modern society, facing up to her emotions and making choices in her relationships, who is no longer a traditional female figure who can be swayed by her emotions.

Feminism on social media: Generalized misogyny

The following study focuses on one of the major aspects which is the portrayal of misogyny and gender discrimination on social media and its influence on societies’ perceptions and gender relations. In as much as power relations in speech are picturesquely framed with theories developed by Robin Lakoff and Deborah Tannen the study employs verbal constructions of gender disparity. These problems are aggravated with the dawn of the digital age that instantly transmits information and shares various content; social networks thus increase the use of sexist speech and cyberbullying. Combining the instinct to investigate and the imaginative capacity to construct a speculation on the reality, social networking uncovered the misery of a huge number of manhandled ladies with the hashtag #metoo, and simultaneously, kept an aggressive system of male privilege alive to torment more unfortunate ladies through distributed abuse. This is where the study resonates with its importance of making a deliberate attempt at a shift in current language practices towards altering the existing cultural and social inequalities when it comes to the gender aspects as well as online harassment.

Feminist Pedagogy in the EFL Classroom in Japan: Evaluating a One‐Shot Intervention Approach

AbstractAt the turn of the century, bell hooks described the overarching lay view of feminism as a negative, man‐hating ideology. Despite the enormous societal overhauls that have occurred in the decades since, it appears that in Japan little has changed. The marginalized position that women occupy in Japanese society is starkly illustrated by Japan's continually low ranking on the Global Gender Gap Index. In this study, we use a single university lesson in advanced elective English classes to stage a one‐shot intervention in feminist pedagogy. The purpose of the study was to assess the students' understanding of and attitude toward feminism and issues related to male privilege before and after the class. We were also interested in evaluating the suitability of the English language class as a vehicle for feminist pedagogy. The results indicated that many students showed a shift in consciousness away from a largely negative view of feminism and an abstract understanding of gender inequality, to a more positive attitude toward feminism and a clearer understanding of the systemic nature of gender inequality. It also found that English language teaching classes were very conducive to feminist pedagogy with language input, group discussion, and reflective writing providing space for consciousness‐raising.

Breaking the 'Law of the Father': Linda Rademan's transgressive engagements with Afrikaner patriarchy in the home

Artist, Linda Rademan, was born in the mid-1950s in an Afrikaans home where 'the law of the father' pertained in all matters. She has professed ambivalence about her upbringing, which was circumscribed by an Afrikaner Nationalist ideology, underpinned by patriarchal dominance, and strictly conformed to the narrow Calvinistic precepts of the Dutch Reformed Church. In her work, memories of childhood and family dynamics are employed to expose the stranglehold of religious expectations, the permeation of male privilege, and the suppression of women's voices in Afrikaner culture. In this paper, I analyse selected works in which Rademan has intervened in photographic memorabilia by embroidering and sewing or 'suturing' areas of her work. The use of sewing and embroidery has been employed as a feminist strategy since the early 1970s, and I argue that its use here not only aims to overturn the patriarchal hierarchy of artmaking but is an attempt to visually mend (suture) the psychologically damaging aspects of Rademan's childhood upbringing. In this way, her approach becomes a therapeutic means to engage with the painful process of self-integration, as well as a vehicle to redress the exclusion of women's voices in her family and culture by presenting an alternative image of Afrikaans womanhood.

Warrior Women: Indigenous Women, Gender Relations, and Sexual Politics within the American Indian Movement and at Wounded Knee

The main purpose of this article is to describe and analyze Indigenous women’sparticipation in the prolonged takeover of Wounded Knee in 1973. Indigenouswomen’s grassroots activism was fundamental for sustaining and keeping the occu-pation alive, yet their contributions were largely eclipsed by the actions of theirmedia-savvy, male comrades-in-arms. What is more important, Indigenous women inthe American Indian Movement (AIM) frequently claimed that they were in a state of“double oppression” or “double colonization”—first, through colonial domination andracial inequality, and second, through male privilege and female subordination—itself,part of the legacy of colonization and the imposition of dominant white patriarchalmasculinity.2 Nationalist struggles such as that of the anticolonial AIM tend to repli-cate the very structures of male dominance that they struggle against. While womenhave been included in public discourse, they have been largely left out of politicaldecision-making.3At Wounded Knee, Indigenous women took on a series of interrelated roles andresponsibilities that kept the occupation alive. Indigenous women skillfully renegoti-ated their gendered position of power within the masculinist organization, constructingfemininities that shifted between domesticated motherhood and female comrades-in-arms. In so doing, they both reaffirmed and challenged sexist and chauvinist attitudes within AIM. They were well known as long-standing community organizers, andtheir active participation at the Wounded Knee takeover was an indication of female empowerment. 

Under what conditions do gender differences exist in power and achievement values? The moderating role of gender ideology

AbstractPrevious studies revealed differences between men and women in value priorities. It has been asserted that men do inherently attribute more importance than women to power and achievement values. Our study brings a sociocultural lens into account employing gender ideology as a moderator of the gender differences in these values. Specifically, we hypothesized that internalization and endorsement of gender role ideology shape gender differences in power and achievement values. We focused on two components of gender ideology as moderators of the gender differences in values: primacy of the breadwinner role, and acceptance of male privilege. We used data from the World Values Survey wave six (89,565 participants from 60 countries). Results indicated that gender ideology moderated the relationship between gender and the endorsement of achievement and power values. Specifically, the relationship between gender and achievement was significantly moderated by acceptance of male privilege, but not of primacy of the breadwinner role. In addition, the association between gender and power was significantly moderated by primacy of the breadwinner role, but not by acceptance of male privilege. In other words, when participants endorse egalitarian gender ideologies, gender differences in power and achievement disappear or even reverse. We contrast previous perspectives assuming inherent gender differences in human values and argue that such differences are related to beliefs in gendered separate spheres.

“A male feminist walks into a bar, because it was set so low: The pedestal effect and the economy of gratitude in feminist spaces”

AbstractMen in feminist spaces often find themselves the recipients of disproportionate gratitude and attention—along with other persistent effects of male privilege that I have elsewhere termed the Pedestal Effect—despite this running counter to both prevailing feminist ideologies and the desires of the men themselves. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild described a similar economy of gratitude wherein low expectations led to heightened valuation of married men's household contributions, smuggling inequities from the wider society into the marriage and inhibiting progressive change even if both parties desired a more egalitarian partnership. By applying Hochschild's framework to interview data from 52 men and 12 women active in the field, I show that the same process explains the troubling continuance of male privilege in feminist spaces: while interviewees of all genders problematize the imbalanced economy of gratitude and many have attempted specific counterstrategies, it nonetheless persists in importing inequalities, undermining men's accountability, and inhibiting desired progressive change. This suggests that the economy of gratitude may be a ubiquitous interactional process that reproduces inequalities across a wide range of social contexts. I emphasize that the economy of gratitude is in fact intersectional, not only gendered, and introduce the idea of a “low bar” to more fully account for the broad range of social influences on expectation‐setting.

Video Games and Gender Equality: How Has Video Gaming Become a Mens Privilege?

Gender norms and gender exclusion in video games are worth discussing. Based on previous research on video games and gender equality, the article investigates how video gaming excludes female participation and becomes a male privilege. Understanding segregation is crucial because numerous video games today still feature misrepresentations of women despite the ongoing feminist movements that strive for equal rights. This article found that the video game industry was established by a male workforce that designed games to appeal to a male-centric market, thus the female voice is left out from the beginning. Women in contemporary video games are portrayed through the lens of male desire in which females are sexualized, powerless, and subordinate. They are excluded from the male-centric structure because of sexualization, sexual harassment, and workplace segregation. An optimistic vision of the future is also discussed due to the emergence of female voices in the gaming industry.

Precedents to Think About Social Work in Chile in the Current Uncertain Political Scenario: Reflections From Critical Feminisms

In this In Brief, the authors present an argument about the challenges for feminist social work in Chile, given the political transformation process occurring since 2019 in the country. Through an approach that addresses the history of social work in dialogue with important political events for Chile and their consequences for the feminist and social movements, the authors argue that—despite the progress achieved—the main challenge for feminist social work today continues to be a male privilege. This is exemplified by a critical view of two main social work development fields: social services and academia. Finally, referring to critical and feminist perspectives, the authors reflect on possibilities for change in social work practice and education, given the political uncertainty that Chile is facing, particularly after the failure of the first constitutional election.