A tale of two researchers : masculinity in cross-cultural contexts

![CDATA[Contemporary discourses of masculinity are framed by dramatic shifts in the context of emergent and mostly more audible feminist discourses that agitate for a necessary reshaping of gender relations, as alluded to in the quotation above. This is underlined by the bottom-up #metoo social justice movement, on the one hand, and the seemingly anachronistic attitude of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in his 2019 International Women’s Day address where he emphasised that the rise of women should not come ‘at the expense of men’, on the other. Debates over how femininities and masculinities might best coexist, or not, resonate amid so-called ‘gender wars’ and the pursuit of a more equal and productive steady-state, as captured by Kagan (2017) above. The term ‘gender wars’ itself alludes to tensions and struggles that are more than theoretical and very much steeped in everyday life, defi ning and delineating how female, male and other exchanges and encounters are moderated and constructed. Indeed, the question of gender, and the archetypal attributes and constraints inherent and assigned accordingly, have evolved into multiple categorisations that increasingly question simplistic notions, moving discussions into unprecedented territory both for scholarly social sciences and within mundane everyday contexts.]]