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Journal ArticleDOI

Analysing Males in Africa: Certain Useful Elements in Considering Ruling Masculinities

01 Jan 2008-African and Asian Studies (Brill)-Vol. 7, Iss: 4, pp 515-536
TL;DR: The authors examines the questions why and how African males have been analysed, informed by the view that across several societies in Africa undeclared yet public gender wars of words and deeds go on daily, and may even be intensifying.
Abstract: This article examines the questions why and how African males have been analysed, informed by the view that across several societies in Africa undeclared yet public gender wars of words and deeds go on daily, and may even be intensifying. It argues that though interventions with males from feminist perspectives have gained ground over the last few decades, more radical, to the gendered African worlds and masculinities have failed to materialise because analyses of boys and men's lives have tended to be blind to the imbrications of the experience of maleness with the experience of other significant social categorisations, such as being without gainful employment. Consequently, many interventions, such as those around violence against women and girls, have failed to grasp some of the critical factors underlying males' reluctance to support feminist action. The article therefore routes its examination of males through a number of categories of social-psychological experience and practice, namely (a) occupational and income attainment and, (b) age, categories theoretically tied to maleness and to practices geared towards the attainment of ruling masculinity. The article reveals the manner in which the psychosocial and the political inter-penetrate each other in the lives of African males. In conclusion, the recognition of the heterogeneous nature of masculinities also, ironically, affords mounting new feminist interventions into changing traditional ruling ideas of being a man or boy.

Summary (2 min read)

Introduction

  • In several African societies, traumatic acts of violence against women and girls go on daily – such that they may be referred to as part of undeclared yet public gender wars.
  • In Manzini, Swaziland, for example, a young woman supposedly angered bus conductors so much by wearing a miniskirt that they stripped and gang-raped her at the bus terminus while spectators cheered them on (IRIN/UN Offi ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aff airs, 2005).

Th e “Turn to Masculinity” in Gender work and some Problems with Masculinity

  • INSTRAW (no date) addresses itself to such experiences of traumas females are subjected to by males when it argues that “men are central to most acts of violence, and violence is central to being a man in many cultures” .
  • Th e UNPFA similarly contends that work on gender equality and violence against women would benefi t from the support and involvement of males since “men themselves are increasingly challenging notions of “masculinity” that restrict their humanity, limit their participation in the lives of their children, and put themselves and their partners at risk” (2005:5).
  • Similarly, Kenneth Clatterbaugh says that the terms masculinity and hegemonic masculinity “carry a lot of historical baggage, which unless great care is exercised in their use, leads to confusion and careless thinking” (1998: 25).
  • Interestingly, this occurs among critical citizens as well.
  • But there are also crucial variations within the male group and amongst diff erent forms of masculinities in Africa.

Age and African Manhood

  • Th e main diff erence is that in this article the self, or the experiencing or practicing male, is considered as simultaneously located within, and better understood from, both the registers of the psychological and the political.
  • Since maleness and masculinity are diff erent things it makes sense that males have to engage in certain activities, learn to speak in particular ways, avoid certain topics and occupy a certain station in society to be regarded as successfully masculine.
  • In some countries, the population under 15 years is as high as 47% and 50%, Angola and Uganda being cases in point.

Africa as a whole 42 3 924

  • Th e predominance of young people might suggest that the young – both young women and men – should have a voice in how their continent is governed.
  • And while age qualifi es one for certain rights, there is more to the domination of the older members of a society over younger members.
  • Of course, a similar lesson is observable in the way settler minorities and small populations of whites in many African countries yoked together diff erent forms of power, including violence legitimized in law, to oppress large numbers of Africans and other populations in those countries.

Country Year Unemployment rate (%) Working age

  • Some of these factors are internal to countries and others are external (AUC, 2006).
  • External factors include the high indebtedness of some countries, unfavourable terms of trade with rich countries, unfair pricing of raw materials that most African economies depend on, and inaccessible markets of the rich countries.
  • While there may still be men who are informed by an ethic of working hard for the sake of work, many men will work so that they can climb the economic value ladder.

Conclusion

  • Masculinities, the article sought to show, is better viewed as produced at both the social and psychological levels, and that viewed thus, male experiences and practices disperse and internally fragment the notion of African masculinity.
  • Th e paper has suggested that more changes to the gendered African worlds and masculinity are possible if interventions into male lives observe the intersections between, for instance, the social-psychological experience of being an African male and the experience of being young or unemployed.
  • Such intersections reveal how male groups are diverse and African masculinities dispersed, heterogeneous and fl uid.
  • And, as consequence of this recognition of the fragmented, diverse and changing character of African masculinities, the authors are able to mount better interventions against ruling ideas of being a man or boy, including interventions against the daily wars around gender.

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African and Asian Studies 7 (2008) 515-536
www.brill.nl/aas
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/156921008X359641
African and
A
sian Studies
A A S
Analysing Males in Africa: Certain Useful Elements in
Considering Ruling Masculinities
Kopano Ratele
Professor, Institute for Social and Health Sciences and Centre for Peace Action,
University of South Africa, PO Box 1087, Lenasia, 1820,
South Africa, Fax +27 11 857 1770
ratelk@unisa.ac.za
Abstract
is article examines the questions why and how African males have been analysed, informed by
the view that across several societies in Africa undeclared yet public gender wars of words and
deeds go on daily, and may even be intensifying. It argues that though interventions with males
from feminist perspectives have gained ground over the last few decades, more radical, to the
gendered African worlds and masculinities have failed to materialise because analyses of boys and
mens lives have tended to be blind to the imbrications of the experience of maleness with the
experience of other signifi cant social categorisations, such as being without gainful employment.
Consequently, many interventions, such as those around violence against women and girls, have
failed to grasp some of the critical factors underlying males’ reluctance to support feminist
action.  e article therefore routes its examination of males through a number of categories of
social-psychological experience and practice, namely (a) occupational and income attainment
and, (b) age, categories theoretically tied to maleness and to practices geared towards the attain-
ment of ruling masculinity.  e article reveals the manner in which the psychosocial and the
political inter-penetrate each other in the lives of African males. In conclusion, the recognition
of the heterogeneous nature of masculinities also, ironically, aff ords mounting new feminist
interventions into changing traditional ruling ideas of being a man or boy.
Keywords
African males, age, income, masculinities, psychopolitics
Introduction
In several African societies, traumatic acts of violence against women and girls
go on daily – such that they may be referred to as part of undeclared yet pub-
lic gender wars. In Manzini, Swaziland, for example, a young woman suppos-
edly angered bus conductors so much by wearing a miniskirt that they stripped
and gang-raped her at the bus terminus while spectators cheered them on

516 K. Ratele / African and Asian Studies 7 (2008) 515-536
(IRIN/UN Offi ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aff airs, 2005). Sim-
ilarly, in nearby South Africa the media reported that a young woman was
attacked by male taxi industry workers at a taxi rank in Johannesburg city for
wearing a miniskirt (e.g., SAPA, 2008). Her clothes were ripped off her body,
others went for her underwear, and even though she held on tightly to her
panties which were torn in the process, some of the people (whose sex was
unspecifi ed in the news-report) inserted their fi ngers in her vagina. Out of
Darfur, the Sudan, Womens News Network (2008, unpaginated) conveyed a
report on how “Janjaweed militia kidnapped a 12-year-old girl and gang-raped
her for a week, pulling her legs so far apart that she was crippled for life.”  e
report further observed that besides being sexually violated, another big fear of
Sudanese women is that they will never fi nd a husband because in Sudans law
raped women can be prosecuted for adultery or fornication.
How are we to understand such violence without paralysing ourselves by
the wholesale condemnation of all males, yet without psychologising every act
of male violence? While it does not focus on gender-based violence per se, this
article seeks to show how to think of males as a group whose actions against
and domination of females is structurally supported, without encouraging a
wilful neglect of the conditions of males, who in their personal stations fi nd
themselves subordinate to those who are in ruling positions in society. In addi-
tion, the article also looks at other reasons why and how males have been studied.
One of the tools that have been used to analyse such violence and other
male practices is that of “hegemonic masculinity,” the infl uence of which
within studies of gendered male lives and power is well-established. Not only
is this sociological concept pervasive in Australian, European and North-
American research but its reach extends into the heart of studies of boys and
men in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the global South generally (e.g., see
Adomako Ampofo & Boateng, 2007; Barker, 2005; Dolan, 2002; Lindsay &
Miescher, 2003; Nilan, Donaldson, & Howson, 2007; Ouzgane & Morrell,
2005; Ratele, Fouten, Shefer, Strebel, Shabalala & Buikema, 2007; Vijayan,
2002). What the originating group of researchers aimed to render with the
concept of hegemonic masculinity were those things that allow womens social
subordination to men to continue (Carrigan, Connell & Lee, 1985). Hege-
monic masculinity is, in other words, a mesh of social practices productive of
gender-based hierarchies, including violence that supports these hierarchies;
that is, the unequal relations between females and males as groups.
From the body of literature and conferences that the concept of hegemonic
masculinity continues to generate, it has been a way of talking about males
that clearly fi nds resonance across many countries, in a variety of settings and
disciplines. Along with the notion of masculinity, the concept of hegemonic

K. Ratele / African and Asian Studies 7 (2008) 515-536 517
masculinity has generally served us well in bringing to attention, following
feminist thought, the understanding of manhood (as opposed to maleness) as
a social practice that manifests in many forms (such that we now speak of mas-
culinities). However, there is much to be gained in recovering an analysis of
male practices and experiences grounded in social conditions as well as those
things to be found in the psychosocial realities of individual males. Grounding
itself on this terrain, this article argues that masculinities are better seen as cre-
ated at both the social and psychological levels, something males do and estab-
lish in ongoing activity in relation to females, to other males, but also in
relation to their own inner lives. It is on this ground where one of the most
troubling questions confronts researchers of male lives: how to analyse males
who are powerless in relation to other males but at the same time members of
a powerful gender group in relation to females. Obviously pertinent to other
elds of study of inter-group power relations, this question is especially ger-
mane for researchers in societies geographically outside of the high income,
highly industrialised world – a distinction which does not, of course, indicate
that living in low income countries necessarily implies subjects are symboli-
cally outside the globalised circulation of images and goods, unaff ected by the
eff ects of world trade and fi nancial markets (see Castells, 2000).
While it examines some of the work on males in Africa, the article does not
review the literature as much as it seeks to point to a number of aspects regard-
ing the question why and how males have been investigated as subjects of
gender.  e article suggests that some of the work on male gender power
(including work on mens violence against women), that tends to remain blind
to the imbrication of the experienced realities of a boy or man with the experi-
ence of other signifi cant social-psychological categorisations, such as being
without gainful employment (however, see Field, 2001; Langa and Eagle,
2008) leads to a failure to fully understand the intricacies that riddle the lives
of African males. As a consequence, such work also fails to grasp some of the
factors underlying male-on-female violence, male violence towards other
males, and the factors underlying many males’ contrariness or indiff erence to
feminist action around social issues. To be sure, disregard of the intersection of
gender and poverty/unemployment in male lives haunts not just gender stud-
ies; it also trouble studies of poverty and of development, for example (e.g.,
African National Congress, 1994; United Nations Development Programme
South Africa, 2003). In sum, most studies on gender fail to look closely into
how the eff ects of little or no income for males interacts with other psychoso-
cial experiences, and in turn fl ows into burdens of masculinity, prompting
violent reactions against womens independence and feminism. Hence, this
article routes the examination of males through a number of categories of

518 K. Ratele / African and Asian Studies 7 (2008) 515-536
social-psychological experience and practice.  e categories selected for analy-
sis here are limited by concerns of space and are not exhaustive, chosen because
they are some of those that have either received less attention but appear to
have wide resonance in daily life or, where they have been noted in studies of
African men and boys (e.g., Miescher, 2007) they require penetrating by psy-
chopolitical analyses – by which is meant analyses of the individual experience
in an overtly socio-political terms and of socio-political developments with
the vocabulary of psychology (Hook, 2004).  e categories of experience and
practice chosen for this article are: (a) occupational and income attainment
and, (b) age.  ese categories are then read with the help of the conceptual
lens of masculinity.
e article begins by elaborating the need and justifi cation for studies of
males in Africa from the perspective of masculinity as well as some of the
criticism of the concept of masculinity generally, and hegemonic masculinity
specifi cally. It then turns to the categories of social-psychological practice and
experience selected for consideration, and in unpacking each of them show
the complexities that need considering in how African males are approached.
ese complexities, the article shows, arise out of and in turn result in the
fracturing of the group “African males”.
e “Turn to Masculinity” in Gender work and some Problems
with Masculinity
Forms of violence against women and girls by males as well as legislation and
cultures which shore up such violence as exemplifi ed above, are one set of
justifi cations that have been advanced for the “turn to males and masculinity
in interventions and analyses of gender power and sexual violence 1980s (also
see, e.g., Brod, 1987; Journal of Southern African Studies, 1998; Kimmel,
Hearn & Connell, 2005; Mac an Ghaill, 1996; Morrell, 2001; Ouzgane &
Morrell, 2005; Reid & Walker, 2005; Ruxton, 2004; Womens Commission
for Refugee Women and Children, 2005; United Nations Division for the
Advancement of Women/Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids/
International Labour Organisation/United Nations Development Programme,
2004; United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the
Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), no date; United Nations Population
Fund, 2005). For instance, INSTRAW (no date) addresses itself to such expe-
riences of traumas females are subjected to by males when it argues that “men
are central to most acts of violence, and violence is central to being a man in
many cultures” (unpaginated). On this basis, and given the fact that “most
political, cultural and religious leaders around the world – those in better posi-

K. Ratele / African and Asian Studies 7 (2008) 515-536 519
tions to infl uence change – are also men” it is vital to engage “men to end
gender-based violence” (INSTRAW, no date, unpaginated).
e texts referred to above go some way to invalidate rationalizations of
male practices and masculinity that are keen to concentrate on evolution,
mythical traditions, hard-wiring, genes or hormones and not so much on con-
fronting violent practices (see, e.g., Bly, 1990; Dobson, 2002). Dobson (2002)
has, for instance, called the idea that sexism and patriarchal cultural biases
play a part in the way children are bred into boyhood and girlhood “goofy”
and “dangerous”. He says that the diff erent hard-wiring of the brains and the
hormones of males and females, whose infl uence “feminists attempted to sup-
press or discredit but failed”, are what “accounts for behavioral and attitudinal
characteristics traditionally associated with masculinity and femininity” (26-
27). Research has shown, though, that “there are direct links between violence
and confl ict with the way that manhoods or masculinities are constructed”
(Barker and Ricardo, 2005: 24). And overtly or unseen, manifesting bodily,
economically, politically, culturally or in other forms, violence and its threat
are key mechanisms underlying certain kinds of masculinity and femininity,
and male group power over females (Breckenridge, 1998; Hearn, 1987; Kim-
mel, 1987).
Another set of reasons for considering males in projects on violence against
women (and from the perspective of gender studies generally) extends the last
but runs along the lines followed by, among others, Cleaver (2002: 2-5), where
she delineates the arguments for including men (see also, Adomako Ampofo
& Boateng, 2007; UNPFA, 2005). In addition to the harm that certain atti-
tudes and behaviours of males bring upon females and other males, work with
males is argued for as enabling us to minimise “problems brought by the
excesses of masculinity (and) harmful concepts of masculinity” (Adomako
Ampofo & Boateng (2007: 71).  e UNPFA similarly contends that work on
gender equality and violence against women would benefi t from the support
and involvement of males since “men themselves are increasingly challenging
notions of “masculinity” that restrict their humanity, limit their participation
in the lives of their children, and put themselves and their partners at risk
(2005:5). Many men, argues the UNPFA, “want to become more supportive
husbands and fathers, but need support to overcome deeply entrenched
ideas about gender relations. . . . Stronger eff orts to involve men more fully in
reproductive health, family life and gender equality are urgently needed”
(2005: 4-5).
Whether or not some, many or most men do in fact want to change is a
question that needs more theoretical and empirical investigation. All the same,
pro-feminist work on boys and men, within which this article is located,

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Cites background from "Analysing Males in Africa: Certain ..."

  • ...African masculinity is problematized through the concept of Africa as a historical and a geopolitical space (Ouzgane and Morrell 2007, Ratele 2008)....

    [...]

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Abstract: The upheaval in sexual politics has mainly been discussed as a change in the social position of women. The political meaning of writing about masculinity turns mainly on its treatment of power. There are, however, some accounts of masculinity that have faced the issue of social power, and it is that we find the bases of an adequate theory of masculinity. Through the 1950s and 1960s the focus of sex-role research remained on women in the family. And the field of sex-role research remained a distinctly minor one within the overall concerns of sociology. A sociology of masculinity, of a kind, had appeared before the “sex-role” paradigm. The very idea of a “role” implies a recognizable and accepted standard, and sex-role theorists posit just such a norm to explain sexual differentiation. The sex-role literature mainly analyzes the acquisition of masculinity by means of a simple social-learning, conformity-to-norms model.

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Frequently Asked Questions (15)
Q1. What are the contributions mentioned in the paper "Analysing males in africa: certain useful elements in considering ruling masculinities" ?

This paper examines the questions why and how African males have been analysed, informed by the view that across several societies in Africa undeclared yet public gender wars of words and deeds go on daily, and may even be intensifying. 

In many African countries, the realities are that weak economies, high levels of unemployment, and deep inequalities mean that criminal economic activity, including pervasive corruption, become part of the experiences and practices of men who feel disabled from achieving successful manhood by their lack of good employment prospects. 

Hegemonic masculinity is, in other words, a mesh of social practices productive of gender-based hierarchies, including violence that supports these hierarchies; that is, the unequal relations between females and males as groups. 

Amongst the interesting implications about age and seniority in relation to manliness is that in the pre-colonial period or outside of colonial reach, post-menopausal females and females who “occupied male stools or chiefl y offi ces”, as Miescher has observed in his study in southern Ghana’s Akan societies, could become “ritual men”, “embodying a form of “female masculinity,” attaining social positions reserved for men”. 

Th e most interesting aspect of this relationship is that one part contributing to male domination is a relatively active achievement (masculinity) while the other (age) is passive. 

Th e conclusion the authors can draw from reading manhood together with age is how a version of masculinity a particular African male might get to support could be based on fabrication as much as on actual socio-economic and political facts. 

Important as it is to challenge men with guns, or the pressures males are subjected to or subject themselves to in respect to their bodies, behaviours or habits, it is as vital to dispel this stereotype of masculinity. 

to reach that world where females and males are treated without prejudice in all areas of all life aff ecting them, studies of men and masculinities argue that change among males has to happen. 

One of the tools that have been used to analyse such violence and other male practices is that of “hegemonic masculinity,” the infl uence of which within studies of gendered male lives and power is well-established. 

In short, the domination of countries by a minority of older males is due to their active structuring of society in their own favour (see Barker and Ricardo, 2005). 

owing to the fact that some of the routes towards success may be closed to some men, either because of widespread joblessness, lack of training or education, war, racially or ethnically biased policies, or changes in industry, extra-legal means to achieve successful man-hood are not excluded. 

In several African societies, traumatic acts of violence against women and girls go on daily – such that they may be referred to as part of undeclared yet public gender wars. 

It is on this ground where one of the most troubling questions confronts researchers of male lives: how to analyse males who are powerless in relation to other males but at the same time members of a powerful gender group in relation to females. 

Th e general point to underline as far as masculinity is concerned is that age positions males in specifi c bio-psycho-cultural ways and hence diff erentiates within and between genders. 

the principal aim that ties the diff erent studies under the eclectic framework of critical studies on African boys and men is to understand the gender of male lives and the impact of diff erent masculinities on males and females (e.g., Agenda, 1998; Gibson & Hardan, 2005; Morrell, 2001; Shefer, Ratele, Strebel, Shabalala & Buikema, 2007).