The Masculinization of Poverty: Gender and Global Restructuring

The signs of a transition in the global gender order appear, in part, to be linked to the conjunctural shift in the global capitalist accumulation process. The main observation is that men’s traditional roles in the workplace, at home and in school have been eroding with the shift towards a knowledge-based and services world-economy. However, the transition in the gender order is more than merely a matter of economic adjustment and industrial respecialization. The transition has much to do with the impact of the antisystemic movements and changes in the politics of identity such as the rise of feminism and the women’s movement, the feminization of both male consumption culture and the workplace, the gay rights movement and the resistance to empire and racialized masculinities (Nurse 2004). These trends have evoked a counter-movement and a counter-discourse on male marginalization, demasculinization and the feminization of masculinity in core countries (Bly 1990) as well as in peripheral areas (Miller 1991). The erosion of the male superiority myth has specifically affected the hegemonic status of the white male subject.