A book such as this would not have been written twenty years awareness of men as gendered is fairly new in health and social welfare. It took some years after the early development of social scientific interest in the social construction of masculinity for academics and practitioners to show an interest in practical engagement with men as gendered – that is, in engaging with men in such a way as to recognise how their identities and conduct are shaped by the way they are raised as men. A very early example of academic literature on the topic was Bowl’s The Changing Nature of Masculinity in 1985
