Introduction

The idea for this special issue on ‘‘International Studies on Men, Masculinities and Gender Equality’’ arose somewhat by chance. Several articles arrived on the editorial desk of the journal around the same time, and as part of my leaving present after coediting Men & Masculinities for some years I agreed to edit the special issue. Although much of the inspiration for critical work on men, masculinities, and gender equality has come from local, often interpretive, studies that have been seen as part of ‘‘the ethnographic moment’’ (Connell 1998), this is now being challenged. Yet oddly, from such contingent studies, broad generalizations on men and masculinities have often been made, often with relatively small-scale data on specifically aged, classed, and ethnicized, even if often ‘‘unmarked,’’ men and masculinities from the global North. Sometimes those generalizations have been made from studies of ‘‘marked’’ men, such as specific groups of young men or racialized men, within the broader gender category of ‘‘unmarked’’ men.