Hegemonic Masculinity
Definition
A concept from gender sociology describing the dominant cultural script of manhood in a given society, typically emphasising toughness, control, and willingness to use violence to defend honour or status. Used to explain why men commit the majority of violent crime across all societies studied.
- Field
- Gender sociology
- Concept
- Dominant cultural script of manhood
- Traits emphasised
- Toughness, control, honour-defending violence
- Used to explain
- Male overrepresentation in violent crime
Common questions
How does hegemonic masculinity differ from simply saying men are more violent by nature?+
The concept locates the explanation in learned cultural expectations rather than biology alone, arguing societies reward men for displaying toughness and punish perceived weakness, which can push some men toward violence to prove or defend status.
Is hegemonic masculinity treated as a fixed, universal script across all cultures?+
No, sociologists describe it as varying by culture, class, and era, with different societies rewarding different expressions of dominant manhood, so the specific behaviours linked to it are context-dependent rather than one uniform global pattern.
Related terms
- Dark Figure of Crime
- The gap between the actual volume of crime and the amount recorded in official statistics. Crimes go unrecorded when victims do not...
- Doing Gender
- The idea, drawn from sociologists Candace West and Don Zimmerman, that gender is not a fixed trait but an ongoing accomplishment produced...
- Gender-Ratio Problem
- The question of why women are consistently arrested, convicted and imprisoned far less often than men across almost every society and offence...
- Generalizability Problem
- The question of whether theories of crime built from studies of male offenders can be applied to women, or whether they need...
- Gini Coefficient
- A measure of income inequality ranging from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (one person holds all income). Consistently one of the strongest...
- Homicide Rate
- The number of unlawful killings per 100,000 population per year. Used as the primary cross-national indicator of violent crime because it is...
- Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)
- Physical, sexual, or psychological harm by a current or former partner or spouse. Encompasses physical assault, sexual coercion, emotional abuse, and coercive...
- Radical Feminist Criminology
- A strand holding that patriarchy, meaning systemic male control over women, is the root cause of women's victimisation and of the leniency...
- Repeat Victimisation
- The empirical pattern in which a small proportion of people or locations experience a disproportionate share of violent incidents. Domestic violence shows...
- Structured Action Theory
- James Messerschmidt's framework holding that people accomplish gender, race and class simultaneously through situated social action, of which crime can be one...
Explained in these topics
- Feminist Criminology and Masculinities TheoryThe culturally dominant, idealised form of masculinity in a given setting, defined partly against femininity and against subordinated or marginalised forms of...
- Violent Crime as a Social Phenomenon