15
votes
Why are there such profound differences in conceptions of masculinity between Denmark and America?
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- Title
- What Americans can learn from Danish masculinity
- Authors
- Marie Helweg-Larsen
- Published
- Jan 31 2024
- Word count
- 952 words
This article is very interesting and left me with a lot of questions. Why does American masculinity tend to position itself as opposition to femininity when Denmark sees it as a developmental stage? Is this an effect of Danish gender equality, or did it make achieving those levels of equality easier? Is it possible to introduce some of those ideas to less egalitarian countries in order to increase gender equality? How long have the countries held these stances - if it's been hundreds of years it may be more effective to compare pre-colonial Britain or Western Europe with pre-colonial Scandinavia. Could the cultural attitudes in Western Europe and Scandinavia prior to the advent of Christianity offer any clues, or did the differences arise after that moment in history?
If anyone's got further reading to suggest, I would be very interested.
First of all, Denmark still has the same issues with different views on what it means to "be a man", but maybe not to the same degree. Frederik still entails plenty of traditional masculine traits, like he is a highly trained elite soldier in the Danish forces. But one explanation I can think of, is that Denmark has a very high degree of equality in the workforce. Almost the same amount of women are working full time as men, maternity leave is usually less than a year and more and more men are taking a good chunk of paternity leave as well. If my understanding is correct of the US, very often the women will become a full time stay-at-home mom for the first several years.
Do you feel that workforce equality is a cause of the different degree of masculinity issues, or an effect thereof? In America is definitely seems like that "indignity" of competing with women for jobs was a barrier to women joining the workforce, and plenty of the current issues that America faces in achieving workplace equality can be linked to a masculinity that defines itself in opposition to femininity. Sexual harassment and not taking female colleagues' input seriously despite their qualifications are two big examples that I can think of.
This is highly dependent on the finances of the couple. Most new mothers return to work by the time their infant is 3 months old and about a quarter of women return within two weeks of giving birth. Many women simply can't afford to take any more time off than that.
Edit: Despite how little time so many mothers are able to take off to have a baby, they still experience significant career penalties for doing so.
Although when the costs of childcare outpace the cost of wages, it may mean that both parents cannot afford to work. When this happens the mother is the one more likely to quit her job.
This is changing, but fairly slowly.
I do believe that the lack of maternity AND paternity leave is a significant obstacle in achieving workplace equality in the US, but I'm not sure that achieving workplace equality can happen before attitudes about men and women's equality changes more broadly.
I mean, that definitely does happen, but I don't know if I'd say it's common. Maybe this varies across the country more than I've noticed, but in my area few families could afford to have a single income - even with daycare being absurdly expensive.
There are obviously people for whom that math doesn't work out to be net positive, and they may rely more on family/friends to help close childcare gaps. Some percentage of them will choose to stop working too, of course. Would be interested in actual statistics on this, because I think daycare costs are a massive issue in the US.
As of 2021, only 18% of American parents didn't also have a paying job.