Contested Family: Masculinity, Sex Discrimination and Emotion

Victory Thapa

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2023.v05i04.5257

Contested Family: Masculinity, Sex Discrimination and Emotion

Author(s)	Victory Thapa
Country	Nepal
Abstract	Conventionally, it is assumed that the family holds care, love, and cooperation within its members. On the other hand, masculinity and sex discrimination are clearly visible features within the family in Nepali society. Thus, the "role transaction" between male and female contradicts the previous school of thought. Then, what is "care" within a family? As family constitutes male and female members (the third sexes—lesbian and gay are excluded in this paper) of different generations from various roles and capacities, the paper attempts to explore the competing meaning of "care" from the family members' perspectives. I carried out five in-depth interviews from July 15 to September 5, 2014, with a modern Nepali nuclear Hindu family employing a grounded theory approach (Corbin and Strauss 2008). The family has five members: two males (the father and son) and three females (the mother and two daughters). The youngest daughter of the family attempted suicide on July 10, 2014, after a violent conflict occurred with her father. Fortunately, the incident was resolved with the help of her mother and sister and the intervention of a social worker and police. From these cases, I found individuals’ meaning formations are reflexive, the consciousness impelled to the individual self-perception that produces action, counteraction, reaction, and emotion. Interestingly, from these in-depth interviews, primarily two competing knowledge structures emerged—a male and female perspective—to view the notion of 'care'. The male group advocates that care is the fulfillment of basic material needs (food, money, education, etc.) and shelter (house). However, female members visualize "decision making", self," and "collective respect" as also inseparable components of care. Unequal opportunity structures between male and female members of the family are defined as "constraints of care" by female members. Collective and individual freedoms of females are their rights, which produce "real care" within the family. Thus, I argue that (i) "role location" is a matrix of the meaning (of care) formation, and (ii) "family care" includes both material and emotional components.
Keywords	family, masculinity, discrimination, emotion, care
Field	Sociology > Philosophy / Psychology / Religion
Published In	Volume 5, Issue 4, July-August 2023
Published On	2023-08-14
Cite This	Contested Family: Masculinity, Sex Discrimination and Emotion - Victory Thapa - IJFMR Volume 5, Issue 4, July-August 2023. DOI 10.36948/ijfmr.2023.v05i04.5257
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2023.v05i04.5257
Short DOI	https://doi.org/gsmnqk

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Contested Family: Masculinity, Sex Discrimination and Emotion

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