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1. Introduction
The question of gender is unsettled in research as well in practice. In social sciences, gender is expected to explain what sex failed to do (Budgeon, 2014). However, the study of gender continues to be mystified by a variety of definitions, theoretical perspectives and political programs (Andersen, 2005; Lorber, 1997). As Clatterbaugh (1998) avers, the problem of conceptual clarity is more acute in case of constructs of men and masculinities, similar to debates on intersectionality (Walby et al., 2012) that continue to grapple with the “problem that has no name” (Friedan, 1963, p. 11), in case of women and femininities. The objective of this paper is to compare the concepts of hegemonic masculinity (Carrigan et al., 1985; Connell, 1987, 2005) and masculine domination (Bourdieu, 2001), with regard to their efficacy in understanding and transforming the gendered social order, adopting a materialist feminist perspective (Delphy and Leonard, 1980). The paper has three sections – the first section provides an introduction to the concepts of hegemonic masculinity and masculine domination; the second section reviews a few criticism of the hegemonic masculinity and the third section evaluates the notion of positive hegemonic masculinity vis-à-vis the concept of masculine domination.
Masculinity refers to the “social roles, behaviors, and meanings prescribed for men in any given society at any one time” (Kimmel, 2004, p. 503). The concept of hegemonic masculinity is an answer to overcome the limitations of sex role theory that did not account for differences and domination among men, women and between men (Carrigan et al., 1985; Connell, 1987, 2005; Demetriou, 2001; Donaldson, 1993). Messerschmidt (2018) traces the genealogy of the concept of hegemonic masculinity as an attempt to overcome the deficiencies of radical feminism that engaged with patriarchy, and the socialist feminism that engaged with capitalist patriarchy in examining domination of men over women. Messerschmidt (2018) states that the concept of hegemonic masculinity enabled a shift of focus from patriarchy to gender relations. Hegemonic masculinity was conceptualized as “the pattern of practice that allowed men’s dominance over women to continue”; “a normative”; and the embodiment of the “currently most honored way of being a man” in relation to other men, to ideologically legitimate the “global subordination of women to men” (Connell and...