A Thousand Miles from Kind: Men, Masculinities and Modern Institutions

Understanding institutions is vital for understanding masculinities. The connection is acknowledged in popular culture, and explored in a body of recent social-science research on gendered institutions and organizational masculinities. Some leading examples of this research are discussed. Key findings include the pervasiveness of gender processes in organizational life, the diversity of organizational masculinities, and the significance of links between institutions. Difficulties in this research are discussed, including a tendency to stereotyping, the limits of discursive gender theory, and the unexamined assumptions of theory constructed in the global North. It is now necessary to move to a world level of analysis, and some of the prospects and problems of understanding masculinity in globalized institutions are explored.