This thesis aims to spread some light over the phenomena of gender construction in the upper secondary school. The background of this thesis is the gender gap in education. Girls are more successful in school and receive better grades than boys. The explanation that is given for this is that pupils are limited by far to rigid gender roles (DEJA 2010). The question is how these gender roles ? and specifically masculinity ? are constructed.

Societies are surrounded by unaware attitudes and views about what is masculine and what is feminine and this can contribute to people being raced differently. Boys and girls are shaped to think and act in different ways from an early age because of their gender. According to the curriculum in the Swedish school system, the school has an important task to prevent such perceptions young people have about sex and gender. Reading books are still a central source where students gather information in the Swedish school. Therefore, I find it interesting to examine how gender is produced in three Swedish reading books from three different periods (1950s, 1970s and 2000s) to see what similarities and differences there are between the texts and the study has been based on three questions:How are men/boys and women/girls described in the reading books based on their characteristics, interests and pursuits?How much space in the texts are represented by men/boys and by women/girls?What masculinities and femininities can be found in the texts and which ones are the most desirable?I have used a text analysis in my research to analyse the three reading books and based my theory on that gender is a social construction.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate the subject field of male vegans and masculinities through empirical method interviews and narrative analysis. The starting-point for this essay is animal ethics, feminist ethic vegetarianism and theories that suggest that eating meat is one part of the social construction of masculinities. The problem formulation is such as follows:How do male vegans construct masculinity? In an attempt to answer such a question there are three problem formulations:What do male vegans think about the connection between manhood and eating meat?How do male vegans relate to the norms in society?What do male vegans think of stereotype conceptions about vegans?I will come to the conclusion that male vegans think that eating meat, as well as drinking beer, is one part of the social construction of masculinities. Male vegans are aware of norms in the surroundings and the strong attachment of meat normativity in the western culture.

The discussion about gender and ideals shown in mass media is a subject of great importance for the society in general. Media is playing an essential part when it comes to establish standards and values and we are constantly exposed to all types of impressions, whether we are aware or not. It is therefore of great importance that we understand how stereotypes are built and to gain a deep knowledge that would enrich the area of Media and Communication Studies.The aim and focus of this study was to analyze how male stereotypes is communicated in print advertising and how visual means of expressions helps to construct the masculinities shown. From a semiotic analysis of seven print adverts appearing in the Swedish lifestyle Magazine Café were we able to gain a thorough understanding about how male stereotypes are communicated and built.The result showed that different kinds of stereotypes are in fact used but it is still a Hegemonic masculinity that is predominating. Traditional male characteristics are still in use but we were able to see strong indications of effemination, sexualizing and objectifying.

This essay focuses on the press coverage of the riots in Gothenburg 2001. The questions it aims to answer are, How is it that although the media was gender-neutral in its news reports, the lasting memory is one of rioting men, and why did the media simultaneously exaggerate and minimize the importance of the riots?The material consists of articles and photographs from Swedish mainstream newspapers. The method is text analysis, with a heavy influence of discourse theory. The conclusions are that since the hegemonic discourse on gender does not allow women to be active and violent, all bodies in the riot automatically become men, no matter how female they seem to be in other contexts.

During the last decade of the twentieth century both ?manhood? and gender studies seems to have undergone changes. With the field of masculinity and the critical studies of men, added as ?subsections? of broader gender studies, new knowledge has been produced to better grasp the production of gender and power relations of patriarchy. During the same decade as the ?metrosexual? first appeared of the urban stage, acts of homophobia and attitudes towards ?manhood? seems to have changed.

The objective of this thesis is to analyse how masculinity in close relationships is represented through imagery and writing in Världens viktigaste bok and Pojkkön, which are instructive books about sexuality and relationships written for primary school teachers and students. This thesis is based upon theories regarding masculinity and family, and the theorists used are Connell (1996), Prusank (2007), Greif (2009) and Bergnéhr (2008). The methods used are framing and picture analysis to investigate how masculinity in close relationships is represented implicitly and explicitly. The results of this study show that masculinity in close relationships is represented by a man who provides, has an active lifestyle, is outgoing and displays a limited emotional capacity..

In this master thesis a category of men otherwise often taken for granted is examined: noncriminal,non-violent men. With the help of in-depth interviews with young men who havepreviously lived a life with drugs and criminal behaviour, I examine the young men's identityand masculinity projects. To do this, I use theories by researchers R.W. Connell and MichaelS. Kimmel, among others.

Men and women in advertising - a study of the ads in the magazines Café and Elle is an essay in media and communication studies covering 15hp. The author examines what is considered masculinity and femininity in a variety of advertisements, and which products are linked to masculinity and femininity. Besides this, the author also examines the production of happiness, and how this may differ between men and women. Although stereotypes, myths and metaphors are examined. The essay is examined on the basis of gender theory, and theories about stereotypes and myths.

The purpose of this study is, based on theories of gender and Hegemonic masculinity, to studyhow masculinity and femininity is constructed and reproduced in one of the most popularSwedish podcast: Filip & Fredriks podcast. The main theory in this study is that gender issocially created and sustained by humans through language and interaction with others.The study's research questions is: How are gender roles/gender portrayed in Filip & Fredrik'spodcast? What characteristics are attributed to men and women in Filip & Fredrik's podcast?How does Filip & Fredrik's podcast represents conditions and power relations between menand women?Through an linguistic textual analysis, which is an application of discourse analysis, I seek toget beneath the surface meanings of texts and examine more implicit social meanings andideologies regarding gender. It includes an analysis of metaphors, word choices and syntax.The analysis shows underlying values and ideologies that indicates gender structures in abroader societal context. Choice of words and metaphores in Filip & Fredriks's podcastexpresses symbolism where men and male-typical attributes are highly valued, whilst womanand female-typical attributes is being devalued and representative of the opposite.Masculinities and femininities are also constructed and represented in various ways throughsentence constructions that guides the listeners in certain directions.

The aim of this study is to analyze the construction of "Christian masculinity" during the modern era. This is made in opposition to earlier research that has claimed that masculinity could not be constructed religiously, that is, without at the same time being constructed as effeminate or anti-masculine.Using a wide variety of theoretical concepts - such as discourse analysis, class, secularisation, masculinity as constructed from countertypes, and finally masculinity as a homosocial construction - I analyze a free church in Sweden, the Scanian Missionary Society (Skånes Missionssällskap), during the period of ca 1939-1945 (the society was a district of the Swedish Covenant Church, or Svenska Missionsförbundet), in order to argue for the standpoint that masculinity, in fact, could be constructed religiously. The primary source is the society's weekly journal Sydposten.The main results in this study can be summarized as follows: 1) The leading men in the Scanian Missionary Society did, in fact, construct a Christian masculinity, i. e. a masculinity whose core values and ideals were Christian, e.g.

This paper is a qualitative analytic study of the views regarding masculinity of six male university students. The author means to view the gender issue from a male point of view and analyze the empiric result using well known theory on the subject. The main questions of the essay are: What, according to my respondents, is masculine and non masculine? Does the university influence this view, and if so how? How is it to be a man in the society of today? The paper is based around interviews of the six subjects, recorded and transcribed and analyzed in a systematic outline. From this outline relevant themes has been constructed and compared with the theory.

The aim of this essay is to examine how men is portrayed in three short stories, ?En omvändelsehistoria?, ?Far och son? and ?Jeppa?, from the debut Från Skåne by Victoria Benedictsson. I also investigate the ideas of masculinity during the 1880s. Unmanliness, paternity and manly tears are other concepts that I have been examining with close?reading as the method.

Purpose/Aim: The aim of this thesis was to study the construction of gender and to compare Media?s portrayal of male and female athletes.Material/Method: 140 articles covering seven famous Swedish male and female athletes were selected from two Swedish newspapers (Aftonbladet and Expressen). The articles has been analysed within the frames of Norman Faircloughs Critical Discourse Analysis.Main results: Male athletes are often described in powerful ways and are framed as being strong and successful. Skills and strengths of women athletes are often devalued in comparison to standards of Hegemonic masculinity and self-control. They are often framed as women and girlfriends in advantage of the fact that they are athletes..

The aim of this study was to identify what kind of masculinity is shown in 54 articles of the Swedish lifestyle magazine Magazine Café of 1993 and 2008, and in which way this masculinity may be different from eachother.The study included four magazine issues of each year with analysis focus on main articles and abolishment of reviews and press items.  The method was semiotic analysis with focus on manly characteristics and stereotypes. The result showed that the normative man pictured in Magazine Café in 1993 was a man?s-man interested in manly characteristic business as sports, outdoor adventures and women. Fifteen years later not much has changed. The manly characteristics are the same but they have been complemented with a man-by-man accepted and homosexually inspired vain..