CHANGING MASCULINITIES? DADFLUENCING IN ROMANIA: BETWEEN FEMINISM, CONSERVATISM AND CAPITALISM

Despite all controversies, men and women are also social concepts that changed over time as well as the power relation between men and women changed over time. Different forces have impacted this change and some cannot be omitted when talking about how masculinities are reshaped nowadays and here we...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Diana Elena NEAGA, Bogdan ȘTEFAN
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nicolae Titulescu University Publishing House 2021-05-01
Series:Challenges of the Knowledge Society
Subjects:
Online Access:http://cks.univnt.ro/download/cks_2021_articles%252F6_administrative_and_political_sciences%252FCKS_2021_ADMINISTRATIVE_AND_POLITICAL_SCIENCES_003.pdf
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Summary:Despite all controversies, men and women are also social concepts that changed over time as well as the power relation between men and women changed over time. Different forces have impacted this change and some cannot be omitted when talking about how masculinities are reshaped nowadays and here we think at the feminist movement and in counterpart - the conservative one, but also the neoliberalism and its principles and values (mainly the pressure of extending markets and selling goods). In this broader context, in this paper we first look closer at the concept of care and how men can be and become over time caregivers, especially as fathers, why this is important, what are the figures regarding sharing care responsibilities between men and women. Second, we discuss the way in which connecting men with care is represented in a broader arena that we call the popular culture, and here we focus especially on a relatively new phenomenon called “dadfluencing” – as men that are fathers, that are communicating about this experience especially on social media and that are trying to have an influence on their audience/public. Last but not least, in this paper we will present the findings of a small qualitative research that we have done on two Romanian “dadfluencers”, namely on their Facebook pages, field research that we conducted in order to give a possible answer to the following research questions: What kind of masculinities are promoted by the two influencers? Can the content promoted be connected to any kind of feminist discourse that engages critical changings in traditional gender roles or it remains mainly a conservative one? Or in fact we are facing a new way of selling goods in a neoliberal world of markets and consumers that uses the image of the caring father in order to increase profit?
ISSN:2068-7796