ABSTRACT
This chapter examines differing conceptual and theoretical ideas around gender and masculinities and considers how they are related to understanding men’s health practices and, specifically, men’s health disparities. It considers biological, sociobiological, and early psychological explanations of gender and masculinities before spending considerably more time exploring a range of nuanced sociological understandings. The chapter provides some of the conceptual thinking around intersectionality and draws on how acknowledging mutually constituting structures of power can make possible more nuanced and multilayered insights into men’s health disparities. Gender, the “doing” of masculinity, is at play in all the previous accounts of men’s practices but with quite differing results in terms of health help-seeking practices. Research on postmodern or poststructural conceptualizations of masculinity is diverse. Conceptualizing masculinity practices as hybridized is important in relation to understanding and thinking about ways to address men’s health disparities. Social science research funding lags behind funding in the physical sciences, and biomedical funding dominates the health research agenda.
