‘Like in Every Other Facet of Life,I am Privileged to be a Man’: Political Subjectivities of Young Men Working in the Australian Health Care and Social Assistance Sector

Abstract

This article analyses young men’s political subjectivities through a prism of everyday alignments and disassociations with historically, socially and spatially produced masculinities. Drawing on qualitative data from a wider project on men and care work, we analyse insights from interview and focus group data pertaining to young-adult men (19–37 years old) working in the Australian Health Care and Social Assistance sector to document how they disassociate and align themselves with certain elements of hegemonic masculinity. We discuss how these young men understand care as gender-neutral, redefine masculine strength, develop analyses of men’s privilege and violence and reject domination, while simultaneously navigating the cultural continuity of the breadwinner ideal. Maintaining that these are alignments with caring masculinities—and are not to be confused with hybrid masculinities—we argue that our participants’ political subjectivities are geared towards positive social change.

Introduction

Contemporary masculinities scholarship has explored the political—and political subjectivities—at various scales, including what we might call ‘big P’ politics, such as Daggett’s (2018) examination of masculinity, white patriarchy and the fossil fuel agenda, or Tidy’s (2018) analysis of the geopolitical implications of ‘paternal peace’ as advocated by a single individual. Complementing these big-picture approaches, in this article, we analyse young men’s political subjectivities through a prism of everyday alignments and disassociations with historically, socially and spatially produced identities. Specifically, we highlight how young men (19–37 years old) working in the Australian Health Care and Social Assistance (HCSA) sector disassociate and align themselves with certain elements and narratives of hegemonic masculinity. This focus enables insights into the intricate relationship between personal subjectivity and broader political contexts in fostering political awareness and action (Häkli & Kallio, 2018), and, more specifically, awareness and action related to contemporary gender politics. The article’s guiding research question is how the political subjectivities of such young men are expressed in everyday alignments and disassociations with hegemonic forms of masculinities.

We draw on an analysis of interviews and focus groups with 18 men between the ages of 19 and 37 (mean = 27.9) who work in the Australian HCSA sector and who were part of our larger sample of 41 men (ages 19–70, mean = 40.1 years). Our attention to young adult men is premised on a common assertion in the youth studies literature that young people are the drivers of social change (Roberts, 2018). This is not to ignore that scholars have also shown that significant minorities of young men can and do resist social change and even lead revivals of conservative gender relations, but to emphasize that positive social change has been shown historically to be bound up with the experience of the youth populations of the time and their concerns for the present and future (e.g., Bessant, 2020).

As we demonstrate, we find some elements of caring masculinities among our research participants who ‘do’ care work. For instance, some participants do not perceive care work as gendered; they are breaking with ‘traditional’ masculinities, acknowledging their position within the current gender order as one of privilege and distancing themselves from dominating behaviour. Concurrently, we also see that some elements of dominant versions of masculinity, such as the importance of men’s breadwinning, persist. Ruby and Scholz (2018, p. 75) suggest ‘the position of [the male] breadwinner both cements the masculine position of power in society, as well as defining private gender arrangements’. Therefore, it remains important not to equate providing financially with care work (Ruby & Scholz, 2018, p. 47). We find in our study that as a normative ideal, breadwinning continues to shape men’s horizons for action (Hodkinson & Brooks, 2023).

Discussing how young men in the care workforce partially align themselves with caring masculinities, we frame their political subjectivities as a constructive way forward. This approach seeks to circumvent dead ends such as Messerschmidt’s (2018) conceptualization of hegemonic masculinity that, ultimately, cannot grasp (positive) change. When framing positive masculinities—‘those that legitimate an egalitarian relationship between men and women’—as situated as ‘exterior to gender hegemonic relational and discursive structures in any particular setting’ (Messerschmidt, 2018, p. 127, italics added), Messerschmidt sets up a situation in which ‘gender hegemony will exist until it does not’ (Ralph, 2023, p. 34). Ralph, in her analysis of Messerschmidt’s (2018) theorization of social change, remarks that consequently in his framework ‘any action that supports unequal gender relations—regardless of how fleeting or situational, regardless of the gender of the actor […], and regardless of the increasing prevalence of positive masculinities—is evidence that gender hegemony prevails’ (Ralph, 2023, p. 34, original emphasis). Against this backdrop, we suggest that the young men’s political subjectivities we discuss in this article are steps towards positive social change. We advocate for an approach that neither invisibilizes or romanticizes existing (gender) inequality and violence nor forecloses the possibility and nascent realities of social change.

Caring Masculinities and Social Change

Connell’s (1995) framework shifts the analysis from viewing masculinity as a static identity to understanding it as a set of evolving practices that are shaped by and contribute to broader social (power) structures. This approach reveals the complexity and variability of masculinities and the ways they intersect with other aspects of social life. Building on this important work, the transformative potential of caring masculinities (Elliott, 2016; Hanlon, 2012) has been discussed by scholars in different ways (e.g., Hanlon, 2022; Prattes, 2022; Nayak, 2023; Roberts & Prattes, 2023). Some (for instance, Hunter et al., 2017) conflate caring masculinities with hybrid masculinity (Bridges & Pascoe, 2014), the strategic incorporation of elements of subordinate and marginalized masculinities or femininities into the hegemonic ideal, with the result of maintaining the power asymmetries of the gender system. While individual agency is important, hybrid masculinity is also influenced by broader cultural and social structures. The availability and discursive possibility for integrating elements associated with femininity or other non-normative practices into masculinity is shaped by cultural norms, media representations and societal expectations (Ralph, 2023). Accounts of caring masculinities that understand them to be merely specific versions of hybrid masculinity that remain aligned with hegemonic masculinity, consequently, view caring masculinities as stabilizing power relations (Nayak, 2023). Other CSMM scholars maintain that, while building on the concept of hegemonic masculinity, caring masculinities is a new paradigm that ‘represents a counter design’ (Scambor et al., 2023, p. 2) to hegemonic masculinity. It therefore is a concept that is sensitive to and works towards social change. In line with Elliott’s (2016, p. 241) definition of caring masculinities, as those ‘masculine identities that reject domination and its associated traits and embrace values of care such as positive emotion, interdependence and relationality’, we argue that caring masculinities as a set of practices are substantiated by both embracing care and rejecting domination. Taking seriously non-domination as a constitutive element of caring masculinities rules out that caring masculinities are hybridizations buffering dominating versions of hegemonic masculinities analytically. Our aim here should not be mistaken as the creation of yet another binary, i.e., caring versus hybrid masculinities; we simply push back against scholarship that does not seem to distinguish between the two. While we do not seek to typologize masculinities (Waling, 2019) or connect them to cis men only—our recruitment call was open to anyone who identified with masculinity, including trans and nonbinary people—we find that concepts such as caring and hegemonic masculinities continue to be helpful analytically.

Empirical research that engages the concept of caring masculinities is currently proliferating. We briefly highlight instructive examples here. While studies on fatherhood have led the way in deploying the concept (see, e.g., Lund et al’s. (2019) work on young academic fathers in Finland and My (2023) on Khmer men’s childcare practices in Cambodia), there is an emerging turn to scholarship on men’s low-paid, professional care work (e.g., Baines et al. (2015) on low-paid, non-profit care jobs in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Scotland; Van Wees et al. (2024) on men working in residential long-term care in the Netherlands; and Leontowitsch’s (2024) study of older men’s pathways into private care work in England and Germany).

Research on young people and caring masculinities includes Nayak’s (2024) work on post-industrial England, and Pangritz’s (2023) study on masculinity ideals of young people living in Germany. Only some of these studies perceive caring masculinities as non-hybrid versions that counter hegemony (e.g., Lund et al., 2019), with others (Van Wees et al., 2024; Nayak, 2023) adhering to the idea that ‘caring masculinities [can be] strategically emphasized’ with men aiming to gain status and advantages by ‘strategically shift[ing] between masculinities and opt[ing] for a more beneficial mode of masculinity in a given situation’ (Van Wees et al., 2024, p. 8). In other words, caring masculinities are situated in these latter studies as hybrid incorporations into the hegemonic frame. The findings from our interviews with young men contrast with studies (see Hunter et al., 2017) that find men in the care workforce engaged in practices that ‘masculinise’ caring and reinforce gender inequality.

Methods

The empirical data presented are drawn from a qualitative research project focused on men employed in Australia’s HCSA sector, in roles that do not require tertiary education, for instance as support workers in the aged care and disability care sectors. The project comprised 13 focus groups, totalling 41 men, and 32 follow-up narrative biographical interviews with men between the ages of 19 and 70 (mean = 40.1 years). Participants responded to a social media ad, or were recruited via a professional recruitment company, or via snowballing. Focus group participants did not know each other, though some recommended colleagues who participated in later focus groups. Many of the participants have lived experience of some form of marginalization, be it because of class, race, ethnicity, citizenship status, sexual orientation, or ability. For this article, we isolate the data from 18 men between the ages of 19 and 37 (mean = 27.9). Most of these young men (13) grew up in Australia (thereof 12 are white and one is Asian Australian). The remaining five migrated to Australia from different African (3) and Asian (2) countries. We did not ask about participants’ sexual orientation. We include this information only where it was volunteered by the participants unprompted. Focus groups lasted around 75 minutes each; the narrative biographical interviews lasted for around an hour. All participants were based along Australia’s Eastern seaboard. The data were coded thematically using the analysis software platform Dovetail. Initially, the analysis was theory-driven, employing the two broad pillars of the concept of caring masculinity, but coupled with close attention to whether these instances could better reflect hybrid masculinity. We then developed a series of analytic subcodes according to theoretically significant patterns. A second round of inductive analysis was undertaken to generate further insights.

The focus groups investigated men’s perceptions of low-paid care work, including challenges and rewarding aspects of their work; how men entered the sector; what makes them stay (or whether and why they might consider leaving); how they experience and negotiate other people’s perceptions of men in care work; and how or whether they feel the need to present ‘appropriate’ masculine identities at work. By exploring the link between people’s perceptions and their sociocultural situation, the focus groups provide an overarching understanding of how men come to be involved in low-paid care work and how men’s care work can be further encouraged. The narrative biographical interviews aimed to elicit rich stories about participants’ lives, their biographies, experiences, values and understandings (Roseneil & Budgeon, 2004) over time. These unstructured interviews consisted of a minimal number of open questions designed to initiate storytelling by the interviewee (Chase, 2011). Attending to the interplay of masculinity and low-paid care work as well as unpaid care across participants’ lives, these interviews enable us to expand the theory of caring masculinities (Elliott, 2016) in the context of low-paid care work.

The accounts in this article are just that; they have not been triangulated through observation or accounts of others. Some literature shows that boys and men typically assert dominant and dominating forms of masculinity in research settings (Pini, 2005), and even that researchers often co-construct hegemonic masculinity with interviewees (Robertson, 2006). Against this tendency, it seems odd that accounts offered by boys and men that do not conform to traditional masculinity or patriarchal norms (Wetherell & Edley, 1999) are met with special scepticism. We are concerned with meaning-making; we try to accurately represent the participants’ views and experience. To avoid projecting the researcher’s pre-existing expectations and, in doing so, neglecting to understand participants’ perspectives as valid, we follow Elliott and Roberts’ (2020) suggestion of trying to balance generosity with critiquing harmful or regressive views.

Findings

The political subjectivities of the young care workers are expressed in our data in the form of pronounced disassociations with certain elements of hegemonic masculinity as well as some alignment with breadwinner masculine ideals. Crucially, however, and at odds with a variety of research on masculinities and care work, we find in this sample hardly any evidence of attempts of ‘re-masculinising’ care work or of re-establishing traditional gender identities (Van Wees et al., 2024). These young men do not perceive care as antithetical to masculinity; all of them rework what it means to be a man in the specific contexts they navigate, with some of them offering a clear critique of patriarchy, acknowledging their privileges and rejecting dominating behaviour.

Care as Gender-neutral

Care, in Australia as elsewhere, is still largely gender-coded as feminine work and continues to be disproportionately carried out by women (Isherwood et al., 2022). Still, many young men in our sample either do not perceive care as inherently gendered in a particular way or argue against conceptions that understand care work as gendered. This is in line with Fraser’s (1996) concept of care as ‘a human norm which applies to both men and women […]. Caring, then, is not a female task anymore but the basis for social and economic cooperation’ (Scambor et al., 2013, pp. 150–151). Participants who understand care as seen by others to be feminine reject this assessment; crucially, however, they do not understand this gender-coding as a threat to their own masculinity that needs defending.

Johnathan (25), Asian Australian, says ‘Care work is some- is gender neutral, that’s what it should be, shouldn’t be just female’. David (33), who migrated to Australia from Indonesia, argues that to attract and retain more men to the sector, one has to open up the profession to all genders, instead of connecting support work and nursing with women and medicine with men. He argues that people of any gender should be able to do any kind of job. ‘[We] should tell children nowadays that whatever you associate with, and it’s okay if you identify with any gender, you can be anything you want in the future. Yeah’ (David). Niall (23) is white and grew up in Australia. He shares how he never understood his care work to make him less masculine. Niall says, ‘I’ve always felt like quite a masculine person […] I never felt like doing a specific activity could challenge my masculinity or compromise my masculinity’.

Ryan (34), who is white Australian, connects his neutral gender-coding of care with changes in the way that men relate to each other more generally, as well as with generational change (Ralph, 2023) when he says,

There’s a change […] in terms of the way we communicate with each other as men and our feelings and our emotions and what we’re going through are okay things to talk about now. And I say that now, because 10 years ago it was […] a bit different, and so, I can’t help but laugh at anyone, irrespective of sex, if they look at you, us, doing this job and think that we’re less of a man for doing that, I think it’s an absolute, No, I don’t agree at all. (Ryan)

We see in Ryan’s extract here an indication of how social change occurs when elements of previously dominant masculinity, such as the opposition of men to care are no longer tenable. Consent, a key component of hegemony, is withdrawn; these statements become ‘unacceptable’. On other aspects of social change that are already underway, Scambor et al. (2023, p. 2) write, ‘patriarchal or masculine relations of dominance, often associated with conflict and violence, are increasingly perceived as problematic today’.

Tom (21) is also white and grew up in Australia. He acknowledges that some of the things that he understands as key to being a good care worker are not necessarily traditionally associated with men. Yet, he feels ‘pride’ in his work. He narrates that navigating the relationships with his clients in a ‘sensitive’ way, is

potentially not being encouraged as a trait amongst men previously and being able to sort of develop a means of navigating other people in a way that men are not necessarily encouraged to. And I, yeah, I feel a real strength to that which is outside of a sort of a traditional masculine strength but there is a real sense of pride of being able to navigate people in that way for a positive outcome for all. (Tom)

Conceding that some of the skills—and strengths—required in care work are not traditionally coded as masculine, Tom, as our other participants, remains unfazed by this fact. He feels pride in his work in a way that is far from re-establishing traditional notions of masculinity. This lack of a reassertion of masculinity is in line with findings throughout the study in which other-centred, caring dispositions (Hanlon, 2012) are evinced in men’s care biographies throughout the life course (Prattes et al., n.d.). The political subjectivities of our respondents seem to allow for these dissociations. In contrast to studies that find that some young men are susceptible to understanding gender change as threatening (see Cassino & Besen-Cassino, 2021; Off et al., 2022), the young care workers we interviewed are not afraid that engaging in support work that is traditionally gender-coded as feminine might challenge their masculinity. Consequently, there is no reason for them to reassert their masculinity. In fact, we see active rejections of dominating behaviour in the narratives shared by these young care workers, as detailed below. Next, however, we discuss further how the young men talked about different versions of strength required in the HCSA sector.

Redefining Masculine Strength

While one of our older participants had shared being appreciated in his care role because of his physical strength—something he seemed to uncritically welcome—the young men in our sample have a less straightforward relationship to the stereotype of them being stronger than the women they work with. Within this younger cohort, talk about physical strength is generally couched in terms of external expectations to play the role of the physically strong man, something that the workers feel quite reluctant about. For instance, Alex (35) and Samuel (26), two white Australian men, discuss how they sometimes find themselves cast in the role of a ‘bodyguard’ at their workplaces. Alex reports,

I spent a few months essentially being the male bodyguard for the female worker. ‘Cause we had a, a fairly problematic young woman in care who had a lot of, she had some sexualized behaviours, but a lot of very violent behaviours and she would quite often, if she didn’t get her way, physically assault the female staff and basically my entire job was to be the backup worker and help to de-escalate these situations and then to kind of come in between them so that the client couldn’t attack the female worker. (Alex)

Samuel (26) has had similar experiences as Alex of ‘playing that semi-bodyguard role’ (Samuel). Samuel’s narrative bears a tinge of a biological and potentially ageist explanation, when he narrates that the older woman co-worker at his place of work was not able to defend herself physically. Samuel then weakens these undertones by adding that his co-worker has ‘expressed to me that she’s not in a physical position to do that anymore’ (Samuel). Nonetheless, Samuel and Alex are in agreement about not appreciating being expected to be stronger than their women co-workers because they are men. They, as many of our other respondents, also have some awareness of their male privilege, working to make it less likely to be assaulted by their clients (as demonstrated by the extracts of Alex above and of Deepak further down in the text).

Aligned with a reluctance vis-à-vis the expectation of being physically strong (er than his women co-workers), Bradley (30), a white Australian man calls being a man in aged care ‘an impairment’. Expanding, he says,

some care workers [in his previous job in residential aged care] thought that you should be put in the heavy wings because you could be used as some sort of security guard, which is completely false because the same rules apply to me as what they apply to any staff member. You can’t use really any physical restraint. So, my strength shouldn’t have anything to do with it. (Bradley)

Deepak (22), who migrated to Australia from India as a young adult, agrees with Bradley’s comments in the focus group. He shares how he was routinely assumed to handle physically more strenuous tasks, ‘Although there are female workers around me who would be the same height […] as me and would be strong as well’ (Deepak). He feels taken advantage of when strength-related work is delegated to him in this way and speculates if it could count as ‘objectification’ when women who work with him would comment on his strength and he has ‘to listen [to] all this just because of my gender’ (Deepak). While this section is veering into a narrative around ‘discrimination against men’—something that is not representative of the young men we interviewed and that most men in our sample would contest—we aim to highlight here that Deepak challenges gendered narratives of physical strength. The gender of the care worker should not make a difference, he argues. His women co-workers can do the same physically strenuous work.

Deepak also shares that men are often taken more seriously by clients. Men will be called upon to intervene when women who work with them are attacked by clients, as detailed above, but it was often not their physical strength but their ascribed ‘authority’ as men (see Brodin & Peterson, 2019; Huppatz & Goodwin, 2013) and the privilege to be listened to that resolved these situations.

A [woman] colleague […] was getting aggressively tackled by a resident and she couldn’t do anything because of course she can’t hit back. But when I intervened, the resident did not say anything. And neither did I show any of my physical strength. All I did was I was just a bit strict towards the resident. I said [name], this is not the right thing to do. You need to go to your room with me and I’ll take you to your room. Do you need any cuppa [cup of tea]? That’s it. I said three sentences. That was enough for him to not fight. (Deepak)

Several other participants shared similar interactions, in which women on the team were treated badly by clients. Tom, for instance, echoes being taken more seriously than his women co-workers when he says,

unfortunately, I am often taken more seriously than my female counterparts despite the fact that they are just as knowledgeable, sometimes more so than myself. But unfortunately, due to some of the attitudes and, and values within the patient population that I work with, sometimes I’m able to get further than my female counterparts. (Tom)

While redefining what it means to be a man in their specific contexts, many interviewees understood the system within which they operated (their workplaces, but also society at large) as one where they were treated differently from their women colleagues. For the most part, their political subjectivities can be seen as critically engaging with this situation. Some of our respondents provided concise analyses of patriarchal structures and can be said to also disassociate themselves from dominating behaviours and structures.

Understanding Men’s Privilege and Men’s Violence

Samuel (26) is a white Australian man working in youth residential care. In his experience, he says, it was rare to find older men in direct care provision—a perception partly challenged by the fact that we have several older men in our sample who are doing bridging jobs into retirement in such roles in the HSCA sector. Like several participants, Samuel connected this to men progressing faster into leadership roles within the sector (Huppatz, 2015; Williams, 1992). Samuel also shares that at his job in youth residential care, older men working in hands-on care roles would probably be suspected to be there for dubious reasons.

Our two 16-year-olds, if you were a male and if you worked in our house and you were over 50, they would call you a paedophile. 100%. I have no doubt about that. They would be on your case. I think society naturally by default expresses some concern when older men are working with children. That’s a bit of a conflicting one for me because men have done, like men collectively have dug their own grave on that one. Like it’s men doing the wrong thing that have led to that perception. (Samuel)

Samuel is ‘conflicted,’ as he does not necessarily agree with the blanket assessment of an older man in a front-line care role as a sexual threat; in fact, he repeatedly states in his individual interview how it was important for young people to have men as carers. Samuel does not, however, indicate that men are better, or ‘more masculine’, in their care work. His comment contrasts with Pangritz’s (2023) findings that calls for the inclusion of more men as educators, which are often connected to a presupposition that men care differently, in ostensibly more ‘masculine’ ways. Instead, Samuel maintains that young people who had bad experiences with men in their lives (‘men have let them down a lot’, Samuel), needed to see that some men were ‘safe’. This trust could only be recuperated, in Samuel’s words,

by demonstrating that like there are men who are safe, there are men who can be trusted, there are men who are like comfortable to have a conversation about their emotions and how they’re going, which, I think, generally the societal tide with respect to that is changing a bit. (Samuel)

Returning to the previous quote and Samuel’s conflicted feelings about suspicions that can be levelled against (older) men within the care industry, he allows for the reason for this stereotype to be grounded in too many men ‘doing the wrong thing’, as he puts it.

Caden (24) is a queer white Australian man. Among our participants, Caden speaks out most consistently and clearly against patriarchal structures as well as other power asymmetries within Australian society. Caden also speaks to the ‘glass escalator’ (Williams, 1992) and to the fact that men are structurally privileged—also within the care sector. He sees men being actively recruited into the female-dominated care industry. The reverse, meaning a push to bring more women into male-dominated industries, was not as widespread. (‘No, men just gatekeep these careers’, he says.) Caden believes that his gender identity works in his favour—also within the female-dominated care industry:

[B]ecause of the like gender ratios, I might be more likely to be hired than somebody who has like a similar level of experience or something just because of my gender. Because a lot of people favour males in care […] So, for me, I don’t really see it as an issue or I think, to be honest, just like in every other facet of life, I am privileged to be a man’. (Caden)

While there were many more women working in the sector than men, there were still fewer women in higher positions, Caden says. This gender gap in leadership in the HCSA sector that Caden perceives is backed up by a number of studies (e.g., Pérez-Sánchez et al., 2021).

Similar to, but more forcefully than, Samuel above, Caden reads suspicions of abuse to be founded in men’s violence. Caden mentions that he knows the feeling of ‘genuine terror’ vis-à-vis men,

just because of the men that have been in my life. And so, I think, yeah, […] a lot of people have that, I think, not even like terror, but just like, you know, it’s like a little bit of discomfort and it’s like men are so often authoritarian in our lives that if you put that into care, it just […] makes people uncomfortable, it makes people stressed out, it makes people trust you less. (Caden)

He also shares that ‘I actually just kind of hate men mostly. I know I am one, I know that’s like whatever’ (Caden). Speaking again to stereotypes of abusive men in care and suspicion regarding men as care workers, he does not feel scared or threatened by those stereotypes; instead, he understands them:

I also think that men […] are also the most likely to engage in like very, very, very inappropriate behaviours towards like other people. And when you’re working in care you’re working with disadvantaged or like vulnerable members of the community. And I think that anything that is in any way in the industry that I’m treated differently or held to a higher standard, not even to a higher standard, just to a standard for being a male is like completely warranted and completely valid because I do represent a member of a community that is routinely taking advantage of the people that we’re working for. So, and I also don’t even think that’s like, okay, I don’t know, I don’t know, I just, sorry. I feel like I hear a lot of people in this industry who are like, oh it’s so hard to be a man in this industry. And I’m like, no it’s not. It’s absolutely not. It is literally, just like everywhere else, harder to be anything other than a man. You know? (Caden)

Both Samuel and Caden (and other interviewees) do not place the blame for the persistence of negative stereotypes of men as violent and abusive on a ‘man-hating’ society or on women. They argue that there are legitimate reasons for said stereotypes and that men who perpetrate violence are to blame. They challenge men to step up their game and do better. For instance, towards the end of his interview, Caden says the following, ‘I think that men need to remember and recognize their place and the history of things that have led up to where we are now and you know, not feel shame about it but be aware of it’.

Men are not discriminated against because of their gender, Caden maintains. This question of ‘discrimination’ against men in care work occasionally surfaced in the focus groups and interviews with older research participants, and Caden had, in the focus group he participated in, pushed back against something that an older man in his group had said to that effect. The real discrimination in the workplace that Caden perceives is levelled against people of colour who are not hired, against people who have accents or who do not speak fluent English, against people who struggle to have their chosen pronouns respected at their place of work. Standing up against ‘real’ discrimination brings us to the next theme we generated through the interviews with young men working in the HCSA sector—non-domination.

Embracing Care and Embracing Non-domination

Non-domination is one central pillar of caring masculinities (Elliott, 2016; Prattes, 2022). While practices of non-domination are more difficult to evidence than dominating behaviour, we try to do just that in this section. Speaking about what makes a good care worker, Caden states that it would be a person ‘with empathy and the ability to really connect with someone’. Some of the people with disabilities he works with ‘will listen to my authority as a man more’, Caden says, in line with Deepak’s extract above. This echoes studies that find advantages that accrue to men in feminized occupations because of their ‘gender capital’ (Huppatz & Goodwin, 2013). A good care worker, to Caden, respects both clients and co-workers.

Several participants emphasize that men who behave in authoritarian and dominating ways are not well placed as care workers. Matt (37), who is white and grew up in Australia, illustrates this when talking about de-escalating a sensitive situation in which a client was hurting himself by scraping his skin with a blunt knife. Rather than ‘fixing’ the situation, Matt was present with the client. He says, ‘it sucks to watch somebody go through that […] it’s an awful experience because, you know, they’re hurting inside and they don’t really know how to make themselves feel better’ (Matt). However, Matt and Caden (below) both argue that ‘controlling’ such sensitive situations by using dominating behaviour is counterproductive. The scene described required the presence of the care worker instead, who sat with his client for hours, and not a brief authoritative intervention that likely would have escalated the situation. Matt’s focus is on what works best for his client, rather than his own comfort.

Similarly, Caden feels strongly that men who ‘are quite authoritative in their style’ are not good at this job. In Caden’s experience, authoritarian approaches only lead to ‘behaviours of concern’, ‘like ripping clothes and all that kinda stuff. Things that are just like so aggressively like linked to anxiety’ (Caden). Like Matt, Caden distances himself from such approaches. ‘I’m not gonna do that. I’m not gonna go above and beyond to, you know, be authoritative in a way that I don’t think is comfortable and it works so well with [his client]’ if he uses positive approaches instead of an authoritarian, ‘stern’ style. Men who are good at this job are, according to Caden, ‘progressive men who are unafraid to […] be a masculine presence that isn’t, that doesn’t take away or isn’t harmful to someone’s experience’ (Caden, emphasis added).

A good care worker then models non-dominating behaviour towards both his clients and his co-workers. Practices of caring masculinities (Elliott, 2016) are constituted by embracing care and include other-centred dispositions (Hanlon, 2012). Matt and Caden take the position of their clients when evaluating the directive to be ‘stern’ with them, something that—in their experience—does not work. This is in line with a feminist care ethics approach (Tronto, 1993) prioritizing personal experience and relationships in moral decision-making, rather than following abstract directives. Caden also takes the perspective of his co-workers and tries to facilitate a situation in which all can give the best care possible. Caring masculinities include an active rejection of dominating behaviour, as modelled by the men in this section, epitomized by Caden’s refusal to be authoritarian with clients, ‘I’m not gonna do that’.

These other-centred approaches also allow the participants to not take personally the preferences some clients have to work with support workers of a different gender. Tom (21) reports that

some female patients are more hesitant for me to provide them personal care and I understand that with a lot of individual histories for some patients and I’m always respectful of that and […] I always like to give patients the option if they seem a bit unsure […] I wouldn’t wanna put a patient through anything uncomfortable whatsoever’. (Tom)

In a similar vein, Caden says it was ‘understandable’ that some people did not want to have men as their support workers because ‘a lot of people are uncomfortable or feel stressed out about men’ and ‘have had [bad] experiences with their parents or male role models in their life’. Caden does

not ever feel uncomfortable […] if I feel like somebody could be supported better by like somebody of a different gender, I think that’s something that I prefer to look out for and if somebody tells me, oh this person, you can’t work with this person because they […] don’t work […] well with men, I think, Yeah, understandable. You know (laughs), […] I don’t feel discriminated, because like the alternative is that if I do work with that person, I could be making them uncomfortable or I could be, you know, like [be] negatively impacting their life, which is the exact opposite of what I’m there to do. Yeah’. (Caden)

Other-centred dispositions allow these participants to not prioritize their own feelings over the needs of clients that, as per Caden’s extract, are valid and often informed by previous trauma. Consequently, they do not perceive the clients’ preferences as discriminatory. Taken as a whole, these accounts reflect a distancing from traditional masculinized practices and signal more closely what Cottingham (2017) has called the ‘emotionally adept man’ that is needed in a contemporary economy (and world) that demands more and more care.

The Persistence of the Breadwinner Ideal

The topic of low pay was a recurring one in our focus groups and interviews among men of all ages. This is hardly surprising, since support roles in the HCSA sector are low paid. When asked about hurdles or barriers that make the sector less attractive for men in the first place, the low pay, together with precarious working conditions and the fact that full-time positions are rare to find, were readily offered by the respondents. Tom (21), who is studying nursing besides his support work, says,

I used to be a shift manager in a supermarket before this and my job was significantly less stressful, and [I] had to some extent less responsibility in that role but I was earning about 30% more than I am in this role. So, I think if I was potentially on my previous salary that that would be a more long-term sustainable option. (Tom)

Other young care workers relate the low pay to the impossibility to provide for a family, to be a breadwinner. Wojnicka coined the concept of ‘protective masculinity’ (Wojnicka, 2021, 2023) to describe forms of masculinity that see men’s role primarily in terms of ‘financial support and/or physical protection to dependent women and children’ (Wojnicka, 2021, p. 3). Protective masculinity, per Wojnicka, is beneficial for men and ‘not the person they claim to protect. This is because the protection is focused on maintaining male privilege and power’ (2023, p. 167). Protective masculinity is thus a particular form of hegemonic masculinity and quite far from caring masculinities (Wojnicka, 2021, p. 3).

Sanele (34), a Black man who migrated to Australia from South Africa, shares that ‘The pay is not enough, and most men generally would actually like to be providers, so the salary is not much to go on’ (Sanele). Similarly, Bradley (30) shares that the ‘only’ thing—in his words—that stopped men from entering the HCSA sector was the lack of full-time employment in a climate in which ‘males in Australia are […] still seen as the breadwinner, or whatever, in the family and you know, it’s hard to support a family if you’re only getting 20 hours [of work] a week’ (Bradley). In the focus group, Bradley had shared that

in Australia as much as things have progressed a lot, I think a lot of men that are in a relationship and have a family, a lot of men feel the pressure to be the main breadwinner but if you can’t get full-time hours, it’s very hard to actually earn a liveable wage in the industry if you’ve got a family. So, I found, I think that is a big challenge for males in the sector […] that full-time permanent work is almost non-existent. (Bradley)

What we want to highlight here is that among the young men in our sample, breadwinning was more presented as a societal expectation and external pressure (‘men feel the pressure to be the main breadwinner’) than an internal desire. While breadwinning as a masculine ideal seems to retain its normative force, we suggest a nuanced understanding of young men’s political subjectivities as shaped by their navigation of the breadwinning norm in a context of a low-paid occupation. Nonetheless, even in a context in which the breadwinning ideal and the male privilege that comes with being able to provide for one’s ‘dependents’ have ostensibly lessened in recent decades, this norm continues to have implications for power and material practice.

Conclusion

In this article, we have explored the everyday alignments and disassociations with hegemonic forms of masculinities among young adult men working in frontline care roles in Australia’s HCSA sector. While perhaps not typically the sort of material associated with the analysis of political subjectivities, our contention is that they represent just that. At the most basic level, the young men’s positive engagement in, and framing of, employment that is often characterized as antithetical to masculinity can be deemed to be an act of political agency, representing how ‘political subjectivities emerge through relational dynamics and exceed determination by power structure’ (Häkli & Kallio, 2018, p. 58). That is, individual actions in labour markets have broader political and social implications. While seemingly mundane, such engagements, and the way the men discuss their dis/alignments with hegemonic masculinity, are indicative of the possibility of a capacity for ‘challenging, opposing, negotiating, maintaining, and readjusting prevailing conditions’ (Häkli & Kallio, 2018, p. 57). This is underscored further through the participants’ pronounced disassociations from certain elements of hegemonic masculinity, which for us evidence how the ‘political deeply intertwine[s] with the seemingly non-political ordinary aspects of life’ (Häkli & Kallio, 2018, p. 70).

We are cognisant of the difference between care and equality and that care can, in certain configurations, also reinforce hegemony (see Hanlon, 2022). Here, we have tried to show that while occurring alongside some alignment, or continuity, with breadwinner masculine ideals, social change can occur as change towards equality as a result of, and through, the subjectivities of young men at the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy—young men who are typically considered more likely to cement the status quo (Elliott & Roberts, 2020). Far from implying that these men somehow already live in a feminist future (which they do not), we suggest a framing that understands much of their political subjectivities—in which they see care as gender-neutral, redefine masculine strength, develop analyses of men’s privilege and violence and reject domination, while simultaneously navigating the cultural continuity of the breadwinner ideal—as steps towards this future. Drawing on our empirical data, we have highlighted critical moments in which young men withdraw consent from dominating masculinities, refrain from becoming complicit and reject dominating behaviour, all elements that are in line with Elliott’s (2016) concept of caring masculinities. These young men do not feel threatened by social change towards gender equality, it seems. Instead of feeling defensive or perceiving the need to ‘re-assert’ traditional masculinities, they see the framing of care and masculinity as antithetical as ‘laughable’.

Understanding positive developments—such as the above—not necessarily as camouflaging patriarchy, but potentially as transitory phases towards equality is in line with previous CSMM scholarship, such as Duncanson’s (2015) work on peacekeeping masculinities, Ralph’s (2023) work on men’s friendships, and aids in moving beyond narrow depictions of men and masculinities as solely ‘a risk’ or ‘at risk’ (Ravn & Roberts, 2019). These men are seemingly tracking towards new models of masculinity, such as the ones that Connell imagines when she writes,

The goal should be to develop gender practices for men which shift gender relations in a democratic direction. Democratic gender relations are those that move towards equality, non-violence, and mutual respect between people of different genders, sexualities, ethnicities and generations. Some of the qualities in ‘traditional’ definitions of masculinity (e.g., courage, steadfastness, ambition) are certainly needed in the cause of peace.… The task is not to abolish gender but to reshape it; to disconnect (for instance) courage from violence, steadfastness from prejudice, ambition from exploitation’. (Connell, 2000, pp. 30–31)

The political subjectivities of young men employed as care workers comprise similar moves when they define care as gender-neutral or redefine what men’s strengths can mean and what it can do, as they disassociate with elements of hegemonic versions of masculinities. Their political subjectivities, composed of actively resisting dominating behaviour and refusing to be complicit with men who do not, show us a way forward. This is aligned with Connell’s recent (2022) emphasis on the need to ‘theorize more egalitarian forms of masculinity, which, we may hope, prefigure ways for men to live in a gender-equal society’.