Introduction: International Studies on Men, Masculinities, and Gender Equality

The idea for this special issue on ‘‘International Studies on Men, Masculinities
and Gender Equality’’ arose somewhat by chance. Several articles arrived on the
editorial desk of the journal around the same time, and as part of my leaving
present after coediting Men & Masculinities for some years I agreed to edit the
special issue.
Although much of the inspiration for critical work on men, masculinities, and
gender equality has come from local, often interpretive, studies that have been seen
as part of ‘‘the ethnographic moment’’ (Connell 1998), this is now being challenged.
Yet oddly, from such contingent studies, broad generalizations on men and masculinities
have often been made, often with relatively small-scale data on specifically
aged, classed, and ethnicized, even if often ‘‘unmarked,’’ men and masculinities
from the global North. Sometimes those generalizations have been made from studies
of ‘‘marked’’ men, such as specific groups of young men or racialized men,
within the broader gender category of ‘‘unmarked’’ men.