Masculinity Under Pressure: Meritocracy, Female Empowerment, Status and Self-Worth

Contemporary Western societies are characterized by increasing gender equality alongside enduring meritocratic ideals. While female empowerment encourages men to adopt more caring and egalitarian roles, meritocracy emphasizes competitiveness, autonomy, and achievement as markers of success, values associated with a more hegemonic masculine identity. These cultural movements possibly give rise to different, and at times competing, expectations of masculinity, creating both challenges, opportunities and tensions for men in different social positions. This study aims to explore how men experience and navigate these expectations, and how they make sense of their masculinity in relation to them. Navigation is understood here as the process through which men make sense of, interpret, and position themselves in relation to societal expectations of masculinity. The study focusses on men with different social-economic backgrounds, as social status is likely to shape both the expectations men face and the resources available to them in responding to contemporary cultural shifts. Educational background is taken as a proxy for social status. The current study focuses on two groups of men (from low- and high-academic educational backgrounds within the Dutch society), that are at the beginning of their professional work-life. Adopting a qualitative design, men aged 20-30 will be selected and interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. The interview data will be analyzed thematically and from a person-centered perspective, to develop an understanding of how men from different social-status levels interpret and navigate societal expectations, with particular attention to how these processes relate to their construction of masculinity and self-worth within the context of meritocracy and gender equality.