Masculinities, Spatial Dialectics, and Discursive Strategies: Reproducing Gender Inequalities at Home - The Case of Izmir

Abstract

The spatial dialectics reveal themselves in gender relations, which reproduce and maintain gender inequalities. This article analyses meaning-making processes around the home space and masculine identities that focus on spatialized gender relations. This research was conducted in the relatively modern city of Izmir, Turkey. The study explores the negotiation of masculine identities at home. The analysis draws upon critical discursive psychology and identifies interpretative repertoires and subject positions related to men's accounts of masculine identities, practices, and roles as men at home. Two interpretative repertoires were revealed that positioned men in two contradictory but complementary roles. Men were positioned as the primary responsible person for the home's public space-related needs and as helpers for domestic chores. Moreover, the 'help' discourse was used by men, referring to modernization. Also, various discursive strategies men used to legitimise their limited contributions to domestic chores were revealed. The findings discuss what these discourses accomplish regarding masculine identities, wider power relations, and gendered social practices that maintain them. Such discourses have a substantial role in reproducing and maintaining gender inequalities in the home. Revealing these discourses is important for changing the traditional understandings of gender and everyday discursive practices since discourse and ideology produce each other.