Manhood, Womanhood, and the Importance of Context: A Reply to Commentaries

In the target article, we presented the hypothesis that people around the world view manhood (more so than womanhood) as a social status that is achieved through difficult action and is easily lost. Commentators identified areas in need of clarification, critiqued the implications of our account for women, and disagreed with certain aspects of our ideas. In this rejoinder, we address what we see as three major themes of these commentaries: that our work (a) downplays women's difficulties, (b) heightens men's difficulties, and (c) inappropriately compares men's and women's experiences. We end by reaffirming the value of framing manhood as a precarious social status for organizing the large literature on men and masculinity, and we stress the need for more research.