The Center for Masculinity Studies

The Center for Masculinity Studies, the only one of its kind in Israel, highlights the study of masculinity as a distinct discipline in Gender Studies, offering a range of courses on topics like fatherhood, education, sexuality and more, in the framework of either MA or PhD studies. Since 2018 the Center has offered dedicated courses in the Gender in the Field track, focusing on social and gender activism with an emphasis on men's emotional world, and providing tools for intervention (Masculinity in the Field).

What are Masculinity Studies?

Not only women face gender-related dilemmas. Men must also contend with their male identity, which impacts their choices at the family, intimate, professional and public levels. Masculinity issues affect men's activities in organizations, in politics and in the military, shaping moral and religious values. In fact, ideological clashes between different concepts of masculinity have generated one of the greatest revolutions of the modern era. Yes, men do have their own gender-related dilemmas, which impact and shape our entire society.

What are the Center's goals?

Over the past decade the Center has trained the first generation of researchers, educators, activists and policy makers in this discipline. At the Center they learned how to inspect different male groups, explore men's emotional and cultural worlds, examine the centers of male power in society and analyze the possibilities, as well as the limitations, of social and gender-related change.

Key issues for research and community activities:

·       Fatherhood, family, and work

·       New masculinity and gender activism

·       Men's emotional world and the psychotherapeutic discourse

·       Intimacy, sexuality, and violence

·       Upbringing and educational tracking of male children and adolescents

·       Masculinity and religiousness

·       The male troop and social clubs

·       Militarism and nationalism

·       Homosexual masculinity and queer theory

·       Masculinity in the media and in popular culture