A space for men within feminism? A qualitative analysis of Italian men's accounts

Research on men's role in pro-gender equality movements has been growing. Across several Western countries, qualitative research has identified among men a pervasive dualistic construction of feminism as good and reasonable versus bad and extreme. Less is known about the ways in which men's constructions of feminism intertwine with their positioning as feminists and their development of a feminist identity. Through individual semistructured interviews with 31 Italian cisgender men, we explored men's conceptualisation of feminism, their positioning and the path towards feminist identity development. Through reflexive thematic analysis and a constructionist epistemological approach, we identified three themes. (a) A binary construction of bad versus good feminism and the narrative ‘feminism is about women’ were shared among participants, regardless of feminist identification. (b) Participants drew on these constructions to justify their positions either as outsiders to feminism or as allies. Feminist participants undertook a complex process of negotiation of the space allowed to them within feminism, which influenced their level of engagement in feminist movements. (c) The pathway to feminist identification was described as an ongoing journey towards awareness, catalysed by past and present experiences. In this process, the development of a feminist consciousness became crucial to questioning the norms of traditional masculinity.