In research on masculinities, fatherhood and care have long been central topics. Yet most studies focus on men’s changing practices and self-perceptions—on how fathers redefine what it means to be a “good father.” This paper proposes a different lens: rather than examining how men perform care, it explores how masculinities are institutionally constructed through political discourse and policy frameworks related to family, fatherhood, and childcare. By analysing both institutional feminism and antifeminism, the paper investigates how these projects produce competing imaginaries, narratives, and common-sense understandings of masculinity in the political field.
The empirical corpus includes parliamentary debates in the Spanish National Parliament and party documents from national-level political parties, addressing family and childcare policies in Spain. The analysis focuses on the period 2018-present, when Vox emerged as a national political actor introducing antifeminist discourses into the political agenda. Methodologically, this material will be analysed through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), in order to identify how meanings of masculinity are discursively produced, legitimised, and contested within institutional contexts.
Preliminary findings suggest that while institutional feminism increasingly engages with care and co-responsibility—implicitly invoking the notion of caring masculinities (Elliott, 2016)—it often avoids articulating diverse or intersectional visions of masculinity. Institutional antifeminism, by contrast, reinforces traditional imaginaries of men as providers and protectors, though it adapts these symbols to contemporary political narratives of crisis and identity. In both cases, masculinities tend to be represented implicitly and homogeneously—predominantly as white, heterosexual, cisgender, middle-class men—leaving limited space for alternative or plural masculinities.
By positioning institutions as active producers of gendered meanings rather than neutral arenas, the paper contributes to the field of political masculinities (Starck & Sauer, 2014). It highlights how political and institutional discourses generate, stabilize, and contest what masculinity “is” and “should be” within welfare and family policy. The comparative approach between feminism and antifeminism further illuminates how both projects participate—albeit differently—in the ongoing symbolic and political negotiation of men’s roles in care and family life.
