Abstract
Care work is often feminised and invisible. Intangible components of care, such as emotional
labour, are rarely recognised as economically valuable. Men engaging in care work can be
stigmatised or simply made invisible for non-conformance to gender norms (Dworzanowski-
Venter 2008). Mburu et.al. (2014) and Chikovore et.al. (2016) have studied masculinity from
an intersectional perspective. Yet, male caregiving has not enjoyed sufficient intersectional
focus. Intersectional analysis of male caregiving has twin benefits of making ‘women’s work’
visible and of finding ways to keep men involved in caring occupations. I foreground the
class-gender intersection in this study of black, male, caregivers as emotional labourers
involved in palliative care work in Gauteng (2005-2013). Informal AIDS care and specialist
oncology nursing are contrasting case studies of male care work presented in this paper.
Findings suggest that caregiving men interviewed for this study act in gender disruptive ways
and face a stigmatising social backlash in post-colonial South Africa. Oncology nursing has a
professional cachet denied to informal sector caregivers. This professional status acts as a
class-based insulator against oppressive gender-based stigma, for oncology nursing more
closely aligns to an idealised masculinity. The closer to a ‘respectable’ middle-class identity,
or bourgeois civility, the better for these men who idealise traditionally white, male, formal
sector occupations. However, this insulating effect relies on a denial of emotional aspects of
care by male cancer nurses and a lack of activism around breaking down gendered notions of
care work. Forming a guild of informal sector AIDs caregivers could add much-needed
professional recognition and provide an organisational base for gender norm disruption
through activism. This may help to retain more men in informal sector caregiving roles and
challenge the norms that are used to stigmatise male caregiving work in general.