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This paper argues that in many sociological theorizing on gender, work, and employment, relatively little is known about how men who engage in female dominated informal works make sense of their gendered identities. Drawing from qualitative research in a rapidly urbanizing Ghanaian city, we examine the meanings and implications of men's involvement in gender atypical informal works. An unpacking of the constructions of gendered identity reveals the situative strategies that men may deploy to maintain, embolden, and/or adjust their masculinities congruent with dominant cultural scripts. In the end, we argue that men who engage in traditionally feminine work are accused of failing to herald the mainstreaming of the fulfillment of hegemonic masculinity which is a necessary cultural milestone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical studies on men and masculinities have gained significant momentum in feminist scholarship in the past decades. The growing interest in feminist scholarship has focused broadly on how male-bodied people construct, negotiate, and express masculine identities. Despite this growing interest, insufficient attention has explored how rurally based Ghanaian men construct and negotiate their masculinities in intimate relationships. Situated within critical discursive psychology and drawing on 16 semi-structured in-depth interviews and 6 focus group discussions with adult men in northwestern Ghana, the results show that dominant notions of masculinity provide a broad context through which participants' narratives, negotiations, and experiences on intimate partner violence could be understood. Findings suggest that various cultural narratives and metaphors were deployed to support men's controlling behaviors and/or intimate violence against women. The implications of how harmful masculine ideologies could frustrate efforts that target the development and promotion of a socially just and less oppressive society are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminism provides a key analytical space for theory-building and re-centring historically marginalised narratives and epistemologies. However, the preponderance of women in feminist scholarship has been construed by some as meaning that feminism excludes the interest of men. Situated within a critical discourse analysis and drawing on interviews with men and key informant interviews with women, this essay investigates people's attitudes towards feminism in Ghana (with the concomitant discourses around what is African and what is Western). Feminism was largely perceived by most men and women as a dangerously feminising and Western construct, capable of destabilising the cultural exceptionalism of Ghanaian society. However, a few men appear to have embodied 'progressive' thinking about feminism and alternative constructions of masculinity. For such participants, embracing feminism comes at no cost to men and their manhood. They admit that men have benefited from a patriarchal system, which comes with opportunities and privileges; hence, the struggle for a better and gender equitable society continues. They propose the use and adoption of feminism as an important tool to precipitate shifts in how men approach both their relationships with women, and their own masculine identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this article is to contribute to a more critical, African-situated understanding of the complexities, emotional vulnerability, and multidimensional positionality that a male researcher is likely to face in conducting fieldwork in a native country. Drawing on my own experiences in conducting fieldwork in northwestern Ghana, the article demonstrates how a male researcher conducting interviews with his fellow countrymen could be constructed within hierarchies of masculinities; where he is simultaneously positioned as a powerless native subject and a powerful researcher. I problematise how my negotiation of fieldwork as a Ghanaian male researcher and my ideological baggage as a gender scholar could be read within the larger politics of gender and geography, as well as feminist intersectional theories. Drawing on these theories as useful analytical guides to foreground my fieldwork experiences and how I interpret my data, allow for critical understanding on the range of cultural norms, taboos, gendered subjectivities, and contested meanings which perpetuate multiple masculinities in fieldwork. My reflection from a postcolonial context contributes to growing global concerns to rethink and decolonise how we approach fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses broadly on how young men construct, negotiate, and express masculine identities in northwestern Ghana. Situated within discourses of ruling masculinity, and drawing on qualitative interviews, this article provides locally grounded insights about how young men articulate and make themselves visible by negotiating and renegotiating the interplay of complex struggles and realities to maintain dominance over peers. Findings suggest that dominant norms on the meanings of being a young Dagaaba man entail ambivalences, status insecurity, contradictory desires, and an investment to always act in satisfaction of the observer's gaze. The danger of being looked down on emerges as an important organizing framework that shapes participants' engagement in discursive and exaggerated behaviors and violence. Consequently, young men engage in dramatic performances and public displays to further authenticate their manhood, which provokes and authorizes young men to mask their feelings of vulnerability. The implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]