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From Modernized Masculinity to Degendered Lifestyle Projects

Changes in Men's Narratives on Domestic Participation 1990—2005

University of Oslo, Norway

This article explores men's motivations for change in the interface of a feminist demand for gender equality and the appeal of new consumerist lifestyles. Drawing on a longitudinal study of egalitarian dual career couples within a Nordic welfare state, the article analyzes the case story of four men interviewed in 1990 and 2005. During this period, the men and their partners challenge a gendered division of work in their families by turning the administrative and emotional cohesion in the family's daily life into a joint lifestyle project. The described trajectories suggest that this transgression is an outcome of a specific interweaving of a feminist discourse on equal responsibility and an aesthetic consumption discourse. The consumerist appeal seems to have offered a vehicle to turn a moral demand into a motivational force in these men's own life projects; consequently, it has facilitated the creation of a degendered commitment toward domestic participation.

Key Words: domestic masculinity • homemaking • consumerism • gender equality

This version was published on June 1, 2009

Men and Masculinities, Vol. 11, No. 4, 424-440 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1097184X06298779


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