How to Foster Male Engagement in Traditionally Female Communal Roles and Occupations: Insights from Research on Gender Norms and Precarious Manhood

While women are increasingly entering traditionally masculine, agentic occupations and roles, there has been less of a shift in the opposite direction: men moving into traditionally feminine, communal occupations and roles. This paper outlines the negative consequences of men's low communal engagement, and how this inhibits various benefits for men themselves, for the women and children around them, and for society as a whole. We review how sociopsychological processes driven by gender norms and precarious manhood keep men from engaging in communal roles and behaviors. Moreover, we outline how insights into these contextual barriers to men's communal engagement may also be used to facilitate change such that men are freed to pursue both agentic and communal roles. We discuss (the effectiveness of) different interventions at the societal, organizational, social, and relational level that may enable men to pursue communal interests.