The Men’s Shed Movement in Australia: Rights, Needs and the Politics of Settler National Manhood

Abstract

This article explores the cultural and political history of the men’s shed movement in Australia. This movement, which is ongoing, gathered steam after the first men’s sheds were opened in the mid-1990s, propelling the development of the community men’s shed model over the next decade and its widespread expansion across Australian communities. This article situates this movement in the context of broader contests over men’s rights in Australia and suggests that it deserves much closer and critical historical attention. Tracing the claims made about the experience, nature and needs of Australian men by the movement and its supporters, this article argues that a conservative politics of masculinist restoration and rehabilitation underpins what has been framed as a program of community-led public health. A closer examination of these claims reveals a persistent attachment to forms of settler national masculinity that had been politically undermined in the late twentieth century.

We would like to thank the two reviewers for their helpful feedback on this article and our fellow investigators on the ARC Project of which it is a part, Robert Reynolds, Michelle Arrow and Barbara Baird.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 ‘Submission: Australian Men’s Shed Association’, Commonwealth of Australia, Senate Select Committee on Men’s Health (Canberra: Parliament of Australia, 29 May 2009).

2 Barry Golding, ed., The Men’s Shed Movement: In the Company of Men (Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing, 2015), 13.

3 Gary Misan and Paul Hopkins, ‘Social Marketing: A Conceptual Framework to Explain the Success of Men’s Sheds for Older Rural Men?’, New Male Studies: An International Journal 6, no. 1 (2017): 93.

4 Patrick Williams, ‘First Bloke Sheds Protocol for Mates’, Noosa Times, 8 July 2011, 1.

5 Charles Wooley, ‘I Absolutely Love Him, But His Shed Is My No-Go Zone’, Sun Herald, 12 June 2011, 3.

6 On Father’s Day in 2016, Commonwealth Health Minister Sussan Ley proudly announced further support for men’s sheds noting how the struggling fathers of Australia would now be able to access $800,000 a year through the NSDP, and a year later funding for AMSA itself was increased to $2.7 million over the next three years. Sussan Ley, ‘Men’s Sheds support men’s health across Australia’, Sussan Ley, Minister for Health and Aged Care, Press Release, 14 November 2016, https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22media%2Fpressrel%2F5895961%22 (accessed 2 March 2021).

7 John McDonald, ‘Neo-Liberalism and the Pathologising of Public Issues: The Displacement of Feminist Service Models in Domestic Violence Support Services’, Australian Social Work 58, no. 3 (2005): 275–84; Hannah Cross, ‘Federal Government Cuts Funding for More Domestic Violence Services’, National Indigenous Times, 18 December 2019, https://nit.com.au/federal-government-cuts-funding-for-more-domestic-violence-services/ (accessed 2 March 2021).

8 See, for example, Golding, The Men’s Shed Movement.

9 Men’s Spaces and Places: A Background Report Document on Men’s Sheds, Community and Cultural Development Unit, Wollongong City Council, 2013: 1.

10 Michael Salter, ‘Men’s Rights or Men’s Needs? Anti-Feminism in Australian Men’s Health Promotion’, Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 28, no. 1 (2016): 69–90. There is, however, a burgeoning and expansive literature that initially developed out of the movement itself but has since flourished in the health and social sciences. Much of this literature sings the praises of the movement and its practices but does not seek to historicise or critically interrogate the ideals of masculinity that are animated and legitimated by the sheds. Andrea Waling and Dave Fildes, for example, write that men’s sheds have been ‘beneficial without contradicting [men’s] experience of masculinity’: see Andrea Waling and Dave Fildes, ‘Don’t Fix What Ain’t Broke: Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Men’s Shed in Inner Regional Australia’, Health and Social Care in the Community 25, no. 2 (2017): 758. The purported aims to increase self-esteem and wellbeing in men, it would seem, require the suspension of feminist and critical accounts of gender norms. In Waling’s case, this is surprising, given that elsewhere she has engaged critically with questions of masculinity. Much of this literature, moreover, has been seriously questioned by scholars outside Australia. Conducting a systematic review of this literature, Danielle Kelly et al. note that ‘while there is some evidence on the potential mental health and social well-being impacts of shed activities … there is a lack of reliable and systematic evidence of the potential causal pathways between Men’s Shed activities and health and well-being outcomes. In order to address research gaps, further research is required to test and develop the proposed theory and logic model … Evidence that exists on the links between shed activities and health and well-being relies on self-reported data from small sample sizes, with a deficit of quantitative or mixed method studies that use validated health outcome measures’: see Danielle Kelly et al., ‘Men’s Sheds: A Conceptual Exploration of the Causal Pathways for Health and Well-Being’, Health and Social Care in the Community 27, no. 5 (2019): 1147. This is, perhaps, unsurprising because much of this research has made claims about health and wellbeing outcomes using an adult learning framework or human resources framework. See, for example, Barry Golding, ‘Thinking Inside the Box: What Can We Learn from the Men’s Shed Movement?’, Adults Learning 22, no. 8 (2011): 24–7.

11 Marian Sawer, ‘Emily’s List and Angry White Men: Gender Wars in the Nineties’, Journal of Australian Studies 23, no. 62 (1999): 3.

12 An exception here is Sarah Maddison who interviewed men involved in the movement and argues that, ‘for many men, the importance of their private family lives in constituting their masculine and paternal subjectivities is underestimated. When their private lives are altered through a marriage or relationship breakdown these men must search for a language and a discourse that articulates and validates their distress’. Sarah Maddison, ‘Private Men, Public Anger: The Men’s Rights Movement in Australia’, Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies: JIGS 4, no. 2 (1999): 48.

13 Michael Flood, ‘“Fathers’ Rights” and the Defence of Paternal Authority in Australia’, Violence Against Women 16, no. 3 (2010): 338.

14 Judith Allen, ‘Men Interminably in Crisis? Historians on Masculinity, Sexual Boundaries, and Manhood’, Radical History Review 82 (2002): 191–207.

15 Dorothy E. Chunn, Susan B. Boyd and Hester Lessard, ‘Feminism, Law, and Social Change: An Overview’, in Reaction and Resistance: Feminism, Law, and Social Change, eds Dorothy E. Chunn, Susan B. Boyd and Hester Lessard (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 3–8.

16 Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor, ‘Forging Feminist Identity in an International Movement: A Collective Identity Approach to Twentieth-Century Feminism’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 24, no. 2 (1999): 363–86.

17 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990).

18 Historians have long pointed out that gender-based activism in Australia was oriented towards the state: see Marian Sawer, The Ethical State? Social Liberalism in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003); Michelle Arrow, The Seventies: The Personal, the Political and the Making of Modern Australia (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2019).

19 There are some exceptions at individual sheds. In a (very) few sheds, women have been granted entry. So too, a couple of community workers within Indigenous communities have adopted the shed model for Indigenous-only men’s sheds. Terry Cox et al., ‘Older Aboriginal Men Creating a Therapeutic Men’s Shed: An Exploratory Study’, Ageing and Society 40, no. 7 (2019): 1–14.

20 Ana Jordan, ‘Conceptualizing Backlash: (UK) Men’s Rights Groups, Anti-Feminism, and Postfeminism’, Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 28, no. 1 (2016): 18–44.

21 Salter. In many ways the case of community men’s sheds bears out the predictions made by Wendy Brown that a feminist attachment to the politics of injury would legitimate modes of rights-claiming that evacuate the capacity to employ questions of power and privilege to adjudicate and assess these claims. Wendy Brown, States of Injury (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

22 Sophie Robinson, ‘The Man Question: Men and Women’s Liberation in 1970s Australia’, Outskirts: Feminisms Along the Edge 31 (2013).

23 Ibid.

24 Sophie Robinson, ‘Gendered Claims: Men and Feminism in 1980s Australia’, History in the Making 3, no. 1 (2013): 62–5; see also Bob Lingard and Peter Douglas, ‘Deconstructing the “What about the Boys” Backlash’, in Men Engaging Feminisms: Pro-Feminism, Backlashes and Schooling, ed. Bob Lingard (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999), 95–130.

25 David Morgan, ‘The Crisis in Masculinity’, in Handbook of Gender and Women’s Studies, eds Kathy Davis et al. (London: Sage, 2006), 109–24.

26 Steve Biddulph, Manhood: An Action Plan for Changing Men’s Lives (Sydney: Finch, 1994); Steve Biddulph, Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different, and How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men (Sydney: Finch, 1997). On the connections between Biddulph and the mythopoetic men’s movement, see Sharyn Pearce, ‘Secret Men’s Business: New Millennium Advice for Australian Boys’, Mosaic 34, no. 2 (2001): 49–64.

27 Michael Flood, ‘Backlash: Angry Men’s Movements’, in The Battle and Backlash Rage On: Why Feminism Cannot Be Obsolete, ed. Stacey Elin Rossi (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2004), 261.

28 Therese Taylor, ‘Australian Terrorism: Traditions of Violence and the Family Court Bombings’, Australian Journal of Law and Society 8 (1992): 1–24.

29 Miranda Kaye and Julie Tolmie, ‘Discoursing Dads: The Rhetorical Devices of Fathers’ Rights Groups’, Melbourne University Law Review 22, no. 1 (1998): 162–94.

30 Carol Smart, ‘Losing the Struggle for Another Voice: The Case of Family Law’, Dalhousie Law Journal 18, no. 2 (1995): 178.

31 Marian Sawer and David Laycock, ‘Down with Elites and Up with Inequality: Market Populism in Australia and Canada’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 47, no. 2 (2009): 133–50.

32 Ruth Phillips, ‘Undoing an Activist Response: Feminism and the Australian Government’s Domestic Violence Policy’, Critical Social Policy 26, no. 1 (2006): 192–219; Bob Pease, ‘Governing Men’s Violence Against Women in Australia’, in Men and Masculinities around the World, eds Elisabetta Ruspini et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 177–89.

33 Salter, 76.

34 For a description of these early developments, see Golding, The Men’s Shed Movement.

35 Linda McDowell, Redundant Masculinities: Employment Change and White Working Class Youth (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).

36 Men’s Spaces and Places, 4.

37 See, for example, Michael Inman, ‘Sheds a Lifeline for Men’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 August 2012; Adam Gartrell, ‘Tony Abbott Delivers Father’s Day Funding Boost for Men’s Sheds’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 September 2015. It is also quite common for Commonwealth parliamentarians to espouse the virtues of the sheds in their home electorates: see, for example, Commonwealth of Australia, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 12 February 2014 (Michelle Landry, MP).

38 Quoted in ‘Submission: Australian Men’s Shed Association’; this has become the mantra of AMSA and the oft-repeated phrase in publications singing the praises of the community men’s shed movement.

39 Barry Golding, ‘Older Men’s Wellbeing through Community Participation in Australia’, International Journal of Men’s Health 10, no. 1 (2011): 26–44; Gary Misan and Peter Sergeant, ‘Men’s Sheds – A Strategy to Improve Men’s Health’, in Proceedings of the 10th National Rural Health Conference, ed. Gordon Gregory (Canberra: National Rural Health Alliance, 2009), 2. It is very unclear if all the outputs in New Male Studies are subject to peer review.

40 Paul Flood and Sharon Blair, Men’s Sheds in Australia: Effects on Physical Health and Mental Wellbeing (Beyond Blue, 2013), Report for Beyond Blue, https://www.beyondblue.org.au/docs/default-source/research-project-files/bw0209.pdf?sfvrsn=2 (accessed 23 January 2020).

41 ‘Jeff Kennett has lauded Men’s Sheds as one of the most important initiatives in men’s mental health of the 21st century’, The Ballarat Courier, 29 October 2013, 3.

42 ‘PM delivers boost for Men’s Shed meeting places for blokes’, The Canberra Times, 6 September 2001, 6.

43 Interview participant, quoted in Amie Southcombe, Jillian Cavanagh and Timothy Bartram, ‘Retired Men and Men’s Sheds in Australia’, Leadership and Organisation Development Journal 36, no. 8 (2015): 978.

44 ‘Standing Shoulder to Shoulder with Men’s Sheds’, Uncle Tobys, 21 September 2017, https://www.uncletobys.com.au/great-grows-here/standing-shoulder-shoulder-mens-shed (accessed 21 January 2020).

45 Gary Misan and Chloe Oosterbroek, ‘South Australian Men’s Sheds: Who, What and Why?’, New Male Studies: An International Journal 5, no. 1 (2016): 113–36.

46 Quoted in ibid., 115.

47 Barry Golding and Jack Harvey, Final Report on a Survey of Men’s Sheds Participants in Victoria: Report to Adult, Community and Further Education Board, Victoria; and Misan and Oosterbroek.

48 These figures are taken from Ken Glover and Gary Misan, ‘Men Together: Questions of Men’s Experience in Sheds’, New Male Studies 1, no. 2 (2012): 14; and Misan and Oosterbroek. These stats are borne out by Flood and Blair, Men’s Sheds in Australia.

49 Southcombe et al., 980.

50 Barry Golding, ‘The Way Sheds Have Spread’, Australian Men’s Sheds Association 3rd National Conference, Wrest Point, Hobart, Tasmania, 24–25 August 2009, https://mensshed.org/amsa-resources/national-mens-shed-conferences/2009-hobart-conference/ (accessed 2 March 2021).

51 Sharman Stone, ‘Tongala – birthplace of the Men’s Shed Movement’, Press Release, 16 November 2015, https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22media%2Fpressrel%2F4198973%22 (accessed 2 March 2021).

52 Mark Thomson, ‘Comment’, Journal of Occupational Science 15, no. 3 (2013): 190–3.

53 ‘Sheds a Link for Men’s Identity: Men and Their Sheds, a Herald Advertising Feature’, The Herald, 19 August 2012, 43.

54 Glover and Misan.

55 Misan and Sergeant, 2.

56 Julie Owens, ‘Adjournment: Men’s Sheds Week 2016’, Commonwealth of Australia, House of Representatives, Hansard, 3 March 2016.

57 ‘Submission: Australian Men’s Shed Association’.

58 Kate Legge, ‘Secret Men’s Business’, The Weekend Australian Magazine, 25 June 2011, 3.

59 See, for the most recent example, the 2018 newsletter of AMSA organised around the theme of ‘Building Mates’: The Shedder: For Every Man, and His Men’s Shed (Spring 2018): 1.

60 There is, of course, a considerable literature that celebrates, explains or critiques the operation of mateship in Australian history (whether as practice or myth). As Dennis Altman wryly observed in the context of a seeming revival of its virtues in the 1980s, mateship seems a ‘crude masculinity … elevated to a national mythology … I know of nowhere else where the romanticising of male bonding provided so useful a basis for a nationalist ideology, and one that was to mark the country indelibly for the following century’. Dennis Altman, ‘The Myth of Mateship’, Meanjin 46, no. 2 (1987): 166; see also Linzi Murrie, ‘Australian Legend and Australian Men’, in The Australian Legend and Its Discontents, ed. Richard Nile (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2000), 81–94.

61 Mark Thomson, Blokes and Sheds (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1995), 14.

62 Mark Thomson, Stories from the Shed (Sydney: HarperCollins, 1996), 28.

63 The critique of settler victimhood is drawn from Ann Curthoys, ‘Expulsion, Exodus and Exile in White Australian Historical Mythology’, Journal of Australian Studies 23, no. 61 (1999).

64 The Shedder, ‘Try a Trade at the Shed’, The Grenfell Record, 7 October 2000, 2.

65 ‘Submission: Australian Men’s Shed Association’.

66 Legge, 1.

67 Although Justice Blackburn dissented on the use of this term, rephrasing this as ‘time in the indefinite past’, http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA/1992/23.html (accessed 2 March 2021).

68 Curthoys, 3.

69 Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese, ‘“Racial Suicide”: The Re-licensing of Racism in Australia’, Race and Class 39, no. 2 (1997): 9.

70 Lucy Nicholas, ‘Whiteness, Heteropaternalism, and the Gendered Politics of Settler Colonial Populist Backlash Culture in Australia’, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 27, no. 2 (2020): 234–57, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxz009 (accessed 2 March 2021).

71 Barbara Baird, ‘The Resignation of the Governor-General: Family Drama and National Reproduction’, Cultural Studies Review 15, no. 1 (2009): 82.

72 Moreton-Robinson, Aileen (2004) The possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty: the High Court and the Yorta Yorta decision. Borderlands E - Journal, 3(2), pp. 3

73 Legge, 3.

74 See, for example, the use of this phrase to commemorate the restoration to the Pakantji people of their traditional land at Weinteriga Station in 1985. Aboriginal Land Council, Western Regional, ‘Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land’, Photolitho poster, Kunapipi, 10, no. 1 (1988), https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol10/iss1/18/ (accessed 2 March 2021).

75 Quoted in Julie Power, ‘Ted Donnelly, AM Men’s Shed Pioneer Broke Isolation Mould: Australia Day – Honouring the Achievers’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 January 2013, 7.

76 ‘Submission: Australian Men’s Shed Association’, 4.

77 ‘$12,883 Bolsters Men’s Shed Plans’, The Daily Mercury, 16 August 2014, 23; Jo Johnson, ‘Members of the Bathurst Men’s Shed Are Ready’, Western Advocate, 11 March 2013, 8.

78 Michelle Rodino-Colocino et al., ‘Neo-Orthodox Masculinities on Man Caves’, Television and New Media 19, no. 7 (2018): 626–45.

79 Mark Thomson, Rare Trades (Sydney: HarperCollins, 2002), 17.

80 Mark Thomson, The Complete Blokes and Sheds (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 2002), 8.

81 On the relationship between the mythopoetic men’s movement and primitivism, see Scott Morgensen, ‘Rooting for Queers: A Politics of Primitivity’, Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 15, no. 1 (2005): 251–89.

82 Glover and Misan, 65, 67.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an Australian Research Council grant, Gender and Sexual Politics: Changing Citizenship in Australia since 1969: DP170100502.