This study aims to investigate young boys’ construction of gender with particular focus on their expression of empathy, caring and vulnerability. Four focus groups and four in-depth interviews were carried out with a total of 12 senior high school students aged 16-18. Using thematic analysis, five themes were identified: boys care about and comfort each other; physical contact as an expression of friendship and caring; homophobia is the problem - not sexuality; crying and managing vulnerability; and gender fluidity. This analysis makes the complexity of gender construction visible: how boys, to greater or lesser extents, express both traditionally feminine- and masculine-coded expressions. All of the boys described situations where they felt empathy and expressed caring and vulnerability. Based on these results, a critique is developed: partly against a gender-binary understanding of gender construction, and partly against the categorisation of different (masculine) identities. To facilitate a better understanding of boys’ gender construction; in relation to feeling/expressing empathy, caring and vulnerability; a model was created to show the complexity of the relationship between traditionally feminine- and masculine-coded expressions in boys’ gender construction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-133064 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Ridzén, Lisa |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Sociologiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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