Looking Back and Looking Forward: Men and Masculinity in Psychological Research on Violence Against Women

• Published in: Psychology of men & masculinity 2024-10, Vol.25 (4), p.418-437
• Main Authors: Jeffrey, Nicole K., Rice, Carla, Smoliak, Olga
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Culture (Anthropological); Female; Gender Violence; Human; Human Males; Individualism; Intimate Partner Violence; Male; Masculinity; Sex Offenses; Violence
• ISSN: 1524-9220; 1939-151X
• DOI: 10.1037/men0000483

In this article, we systematically and critically review the past decade of empirical psychological research (n = 132) on masculinity and violence against women (VAW) to demonstrate an overreliance on individualist and "culturalist" (or culturally essentialist) approaches to theorizing and studying masculinity. Individualist and essentialist approaches assume that masculinity is something men are or possess based on the extent to which they identify with, conform to, or approve of traits or norms (pre)deemed masculine. We argue that these approaches cannot explain why it is men who overwhelmingly practice VAW, or account for the contextual, material, and structural power asymmetries that create conditions for gendered violence. We demonstrate the potentiality of formulations of masculinity (structuralist, poststructuralist, and especially processual) for ending VAW that move beyond individualism and essentialism. While they have helpfully situated masculinity within wider systemic forces, structuralist approaches often overlook how structures operate in constituting masculinities; and they impose false unity by theorizing masculinity through a homogenizing categorical lens. Poststructuralist approaches have accounted for fluidity in the complex construction of masculine subjects, but not for sociomaterial forces, or systemic inequities and modes of structural violence (e.g., neoliberalism, colonialism) that coproduce VAW. We argue that processual approaches, not yet mobilized in the empirical psychological masculinity and VAW literature, offer a particularly productive new way forward in that they map how the individual and social intertwine. We outline implications for theory, research, and praxis. Public Significance Statement Psychologists tend to conceptualize and study masculinity as something that men are or possess, leaving undertheorized how the individual and sociomaterial intertwine in explaining violence. New approaches that understand and study masculinity as constantly shifting with the social and material world will help us better understand and disrupt the links between masculinity and violence against women.