CAREMEN: Reconfiguration of Caring Masculinity in Efficiency-driven and Resource-limited Care Work

Previous research suggests that professional care requires men to engage in emotional labor and demonstrate softer forms of masculinity, comprising identity elements associated with both masculinities and femininities. However, increasing time pressure and efforts to improve efficiency have shifted professional care from people- and service-oriented labor toward task- and performance-oriented labor. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, this project explores the ways in which Finnish male nurses’ masculinities are shaped through interactions with the socio-material conditions of care work, which increasingly emphasize efficiency and quantitative achievements. The objective of the study is to produce knowledge about the socio-material construction of masculinity in care work and its implications for gender equality and other intersectional equalities. Simultaneously, the project aims to theoretically renew and diversify the ongoing discourse on masculinities in paid care.