Virility, Potency and Changing Political Economies in Latin America

Paulson looks at changing landscapes of employment and governance in Latin American, and asks how these interrelate with changes in conditions that support men to feel and look virile and potent in their personal and public lives.

Drawing attention to struggles by all kinds of actors to develop meanings and practices of masculinity adequate for their XXI century realities, Paulson raises questions about research, policies and programs that focus gender work only on women and women’s issues.

Latin American data show rapidly growing participation of women in education and the work force, with much slower changes in political and reproductive realms. They also reveal small net decreases in men’s work force participation, and significant relative decreases in men’s educational attainment in relation to women.

Alarming increases in the disproportionate number of men who suffer disability and early death draw attention to violent regimes of masculinity in which men in some countries are up to ten times as likely as women to be victims of  homicide and military violence, as well as the most intimate form of violence, suicide. Men also face brutal and unsafe working conditions in mines, construction, forestry, commercial fishing, and agroindustry.

About the speaker

Susan Paulson is Professor of Anthropology at Miami University and of Human Ecology at Lund University in Sweden. Her areas of interest include political ecology and gender/race/sexuality and her work explores connections between identity, economy and environment. Paulson spent fifteen years living and conducting research in South America, teaching in several Latin American universities.

Paulson’s books include Political Ecology across Spaces, Scales, and Social Groups (Rutgers University Press 2004); Huellas de género en el mar, el parque y el páramo (Abya Yala 2009), and Masculinidades en Movimiento: Sistemas de Género y Territorios en Transformación (TESEO forthcoming).