Embodied power in the lives of ageing managers: masculinities, health and privilege in a post-Socialist context

This article explores how embodied power manifests in the lives of ageing men working in managerial professions. Building on critical studies on men and masculinities, we examine how power within gender and organisational hierarchies is lived and embodied by men whose careers took shape in the Czech Republic during the transition from state socialism towards neoliberalism. Based on 13 in-depth interviews, this study demonstrates that although these men frequently achieved success, they also faced substantial physical and mental health crises associated with embodied power, understood as the compulsive and normative drive to control diverse aspects of their lives. Moments of collapse sometimes prompted reflection and gradual shifts towards self-/care and boundary-setting. Yet participants framed these changes as individual lifestyle choices, rarely accompanied by a critique of the hierarchies that had both catalysed their crises and enabled their success. We argue that power not only affects those in less powerful or marginalised positions but also undermines the health of those who wield it. Ageing thus emerges as both a site of vulnerability and a potential space for redefining masculinity, provided such shifts are personally reflected and analytically situated within broader structural critique.