Raewyn Connell

Raewyn Connell is an Australian sociologist best known for developing the concept of hegemonic masculinity in her book Masculinities (1995). She argued that in any given society there exists a dominant, culturally exalted pattern of masculinity that legitimates men's collective authority over women and over other, subordinated forms of masculinity, and that this hegemonic pattern is a historically and culturally variable social construction rather than a fixed biological or psychological trait. Connell's framework treated gender as a structure of power organizing not only relations between men and women but also relations among different masculinities themselves, and it became one of the most widely used concepts in the sociology of gender and men's studies internationally.