Men and Gender Relations.(Book Review)

By Bob Pease. 2002:Tertiary Press, Croydon, Victoria 216 pages including bibliography and index. Paperback $29.95. Reviewed by: Jane E. Prather, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology California State University, Northridge Northridge CA 91330-8318 Jane.Prather@CSUN.EDU

According to author Bob Pease, Men and Gender Relations is a text based upon a progressive male standpoint which can be critical of men's status in society, can delineate the potential contributions of the standpoint to women's inequality, and can promote an ethnical commitment to addressing that inequality (p.4). In short, the author believes that the objective of this book, like that of the study of men, should be to strive for gender equality. A commendable, if not, lofty goal. In addition, the back cover of the text states that the book examines issues that confront men throughout their lives and asserts these themes are comprehensively reviewed. This last objective was not met. Many topics were presented, but only a few in a comprehensive manner.

The book is divided into four sections:(1) an overview of theoretical perspectives, (2) summary of the major substantive issues impacting men, (3) elaboration of the inequalities differentiating men and (4) a visionary notion of moving from domination to equal partnerships. The features and the problems with each section will be discussed, particularly in light of the value of this book as a teaching text.

The scope of the theoretical and political perspectives impressed this reviewer, but the lack of depth in presenting the major tenets was disappointing. Included in this unit are the typical biological, psychological and sociological theories about gender and masculinity. Then the chapter moves to the more contemporary and tangential notions as materialist theories and postmodern deconstruction of men. The problem with this important theoretical section is that each theory encompasses no more than three pages. Thus, each perspective is distilled, summarized and critiqued in an abbreviated form that they would be meaningless for most students attempting to learn the basic arguments of the various gender and masculinity theories. For example, Freud's psychoanalytic perspective is reduced to one paragraph followed by several paragraphs of critiques of the psychoanalytical perspectives by several researchers. The problem with such a short summary of Freud is that most students taking an introductory course in gender or masculinity have such a limited exposure to Freud and other psychoanalytical perspectives, that they cannot fully grasp the approach. Hence the critiques are insignificant. It would have been more useful for students to have longer discussion of the theories and less review of the literature criticizing the theories. In contrast to the very brief theoretical discussion, the chapter on the men's movement contains details of various dimensions of the men's movement in the United States, Britain, and Australia including many short-lived men's rights groups. One's impression from reading this chapter is that the men's movement is widespread in first world countries when, in fact, the movement encompasses a very small percentage of men.

The second and largest section of the text comprises substantive areas of men's lives beginning with boyhood experiences including relations with parents, peers, sports and schools. Other chapters include overviews of men'sexuality; of emotions and obstacles to men's emotional literacy; of men's family work and strategies for persuading men to be more involved in families; of men at work; and of men's health. These themes are the major issues that confront men through their lives and as the author argues these themes are presented from a feminist theory perspective. But these issues are not comprehensively reviewed. Instead, the coverage of major topics in each chapter is very restrictive. To illustrate, the boyhood chapter includes only sketches of the issues, reading like a quick review of the literature rather than a substantive description of growing up male. The paucity of information is even more notable in the presentation of ...