Maddalena Cannito’s research while affiliated with University of Trento and other places

Several studies have shown the impact of parenthood on academic careers and the existence of a motherhood penalty. However, fathers' experiences of reconciling caring responsibilities with academic work are less studied. The article explores the representations of fatherhood and men's reconciliation practices in Italian academia. The analysis is based on 64 semi-structured interviews with male associate professors and postdoc researchers in various Italian universities, working in STEM and SSH departments. The results indicate that, in the early stages of the academic career, men similarly to women tend to postpone parenthood or to "choose" not to have children. Those men who have children, instead, enact different models of fatherhood that we have called the ‘absent father', the ‘negotiator' and the ‘present father', without significant differences among disciplines or academic positions. However, only a minority of fathers are closely involved in childcare, and they experience penalties and work-related stress. The article gives insights into possible policies to support the work-life balance of the (still rare) involved academic fathers and to encourage the others to share care duties more equally with their partners.

The contributions gathered in this special issue outline an analytical framework, stemming from diverse objectives, related to the drafting and implementation of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) within universities. They focus on three areas of interest: actions for integrating gender perspectives into research and education, implementation processes, and the relationships between GEP content and the broader social context.

The article explores how fatherhood in prison is conceived and supported by policy intervention in Italy. Despite the fact that, in 2020, 96% of adults detained in Italian prisons were men and half of them had at least one child, fatherhood in prison, a gendered space and institution where masculinities are (re)produced, is an underdeveloped research topic. Adopting a caring masculinity perspective, we focus on incarcerated fatherhood to investigate if and how Italian social programs that deal with incarcerated parents target fathers and, if so, to what extent they promote caring masculinities. To this aim, we will combine an analysis of social programs for incarcerated fathers in Italy, almost entirely run by third sector organizations, with discursive interviews with educators, welfare workers, and third sector stakeholders who participated in the implementation of a project for incarcerated parents in a north Italian prison. The results of our analysis show that involved fatherhood is not only denied to incarcerated men; it is also not allowed in an institution, such as a prison, where domination is the keyword.

Academic research is dedicating growing attention to the phenomenon known as the manosphere, where genders and (hetero)sexual relations are explained according to the so-called Red Pill philosophy and LMS theory. In this article, we critically analyze these theories and their pseudoscientific assumptions using a Bourdieusian framework, and we analyze the empirical effects they have in the Incel and Red Pill Italian communities through the example of the “Aranzulla case”. By exploring the “Redpiller” blog and two Incel forums (“Forum of the uglies” and “Forum of the Incel”), we found that, on one hand, the Red Pill and LMS theories are strongly contradictory in themselves because, even if they combine socio-economic and biological theories to explain sexual relations, they assume a fixed vision of gender based on (supposedly) natural inclinations. On the other hand, our results show that these theories promote misogynistic content blaming women for men’s unsatisfaction, but they actually unveil intragender dynamics. Indeed, they produce tensions inside the manosphere, by creating hierarchies of masculinities, and around the possibility of escaping the biological destiny linked to the Incel condition.

In this paper we claim that gender attitudes towards fatherhood and parental practice, change quicker than attitudes of Polish society towards domestic violence (DV) and gender stereotypes. In the literary review we used an interpretative approach, embedded in Michael Rush’s (2015) theoretical framework, based on the Nordic turn in social policy and the convergence and divergence of fathering across cultures (Seward & Rush, 2016). Focusing on an empirical case study a questionnaire directed to future teachers was used as a method of data collection, to interlink attitudes towards fatherhood, masculinity/femininity archetypes and violence in intimate relationships. Gender stereotypes as well as attitudes towards DV and paternal involvement are strongly interconnected, and yet social change in these areas occurs at varied speeds in each field, due to the differences in which society accepts new norms. Whilst many studies suggest that involved fathers have a positive impact, leading to a decrease in violent behaviour, we take this further, demonstrating that change in fatherhood patterns has a positive impact on decreasing the social tolerance of DV. However, as our study shows this must be accompanied by changes in gender stereotypes, including attitudes towards fatherhood.

In the last few years, the informal network – called manosphere – of forums, websites and blogs, where commentators are mainly men and focus on issues relating to masculinity, has been gaining members and visibility. The article’s objective is to explore the politics of fatherhood and masculinity that an Italian non-resident fathers’ online forum engages in to assess whether the claims for fathers’ rights are a move towards a new form of involved fatherhood or if they are only useful to rebuild a solid traditional male identity. By conducting an explorative content analysis on their Facebook group and page, we found that fatherhood is an ‘empty box’ and that fathers’ rights are used in a strategic way to justify hegemonic masculinity, gender-based violence, as well as antifeminist and antifeminine ideas, and to promote political advocacy cooperating with right-wing parties. The article also reflects on the connections between hegemony and power using the concept of hybrid masculinities.

The paper illustrates the results of a qualitative study conducted in Italy during the lockdown, and aimed at investigating the consequences of remote work on work-life balance and gender inequalities in the division of paid and unpaid labor within heterosexual couples. Drawing from 20 online in-depth interviews with 10 heterosexual couples, the paper highlights the expansion of work over other domains, which worsened with remote work. Even if for some interviewed men it was an occasion to experience a more involved fatherhood, for the majority of them a rethinking of their commitment in paid work is inconceivable. Conversely, mothers are more keen on considering job requests as negotiable and perceive a pervasive interference of work on family life, while their husbands often claim that childcare activities may reduce their productivity. Remote work does not allow the redefinition of the working models and does not improve the work-life balance of interviewed couples, which is still considerably unbalanced towards job, with a limited space and time for individual activities. Moreover, remote work, even in this unprecedented extreme situation, does not modify gender normative roles within domestic domain and thus it reproduces and 802 sometimes exacerbates gender inequalities with women trying to balance their double role and fathers expanding the time devoted to work.

The article discusses the accounts of 35 heterosexual Italian fathers about their partners’ influence on their decision-making about taking parental leave. While Italian men’s low use of parental leave has been explored, their partners’ influence on their choices in this matter has not. Using interviews with working fathers, 25 of whom took parental leave, what emerges is the primary role taken on by women. However, despite the pivotal role played by women in decision-making, the data show a complex and dynamic scenario: on the one hand, men’s choice to take parental leave is the result of a process of negotiation that involves the way gender is performed, and in which men, too, are active subjects of social change; on the other, men who do not take parental leave talk about a ‘natural’ choice linked to the fact that their partners want to be there with the child. However, the latter is the result of gender stereotypes that position fathers as mothers’ helpers and prioritize men’s commitment in the labor market. For these reasons, the data also contribute to refining the notion of ‘maternal gatekeeping’, reconsidering it in light of how gender is done and redone.