Male privilege

Male privilege is the system of advantages or rights that are available to men on the basis of their sex. A man's access to these benefits may vary depending on how closely they match their society's ideal masculine norm. Academic studies of male privilege were a focus of feminist scholarship during the 1970s. These studies began by examining barriers to equity between the sexes. In later decades, researchers began to focus on the intersectionality and overlapping nature of privileges relating to sex, race, social class, sexual orientation, and other forms of social classification. Special privileges and status are granted to males in patriarchal societies. These are societies defined by male supremacy, in which males hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property. With systemic subordination of women, males gain economic, political, social, educational, and practical advantages that are more or less unavailable to women. The long-standing and unquestioned nature of such patriarchal systems, reinforced over generations, tends to make privilege invisible to holders; it can lead males who benefit from such privilege to ascribe their special status to their own individual merits and achievements, rather than to unearned advantages. In the field of sociology, male privilege is seen as embedded in the structure of social institutions, as when men are often assigned authority over women in the workforce, and benefit from women's traditional caretaking role. Privileges can be classified as either positive or negative, depending on how they affect the rest of society. Women's studies scholar Peggy McIntosh writes: We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages that we can work to spread, to the point where they are not advantages at all but simply part of the normal civic and social fabric, and negative types of advantage that unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (2)

Related concepts (9)

Related lectures (1)

The Impact of Gender on Engineering Students’ Group Work Experiences

Roland John Tormey, Siara Ruth Isaac, Prisca Aeby, Mila Vukmirovic

Women remain significantly underrepresented in engineering education, a cultural milieu which is stereotypically seen as a masculine domain. Laboratory studies and some questionnaire-based studies suggest being numerically under- or overrepresented in stud ...

2019

The Impact of Gender on Engineering Students' Group Work Experiences

Roland John Tormey, Siara Ruth Isaac, Prisca Aeby, Mila Vukmirovic

TEMPUS PUBLICATIONS2019

Patriarchy

Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical anthropological term for families or clans controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males and in feminist theory where it is used to describe broad social structures in which men dominate over women and children. In these theories it is often extended to a variety of manifestations in which men have social privileges over others causing exploitation or oppression, such as through male dominance of moral authority and control of property.

Hegemonic masculinity

In gender studies, hegemonic masculinity is part of R. W. Connell's gender order theory, which recognizes multiple masculinities that vary across time, society, culture, and the individual. Hegemonic masculinity is defined as a practice that legitimizes men's dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of the common male population and women, and other marginalized ways of being a man. Conceptually, hegemonic masculinity proposes to explain how and why men maintain dominant social roles over women, and other gender identities, which are perceived as "feminine" in a given society.

Man

A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromosome from the father. Sex differentiation of the male fetus is governed by the SRY gene on the Y chromosome. During puberty, hormones which stimulate androgen production result in the development of secondary sexual characteristics, thus exhibiting greater differences between the sexes.

Analyzing Masculinity in American Cinema HUM-233: Film history and theory

Explores masculinity in American cinema, focusing on gender, power dynamics, and hegemonic masculinity.