Deconstructing the Structural Failure of the Male Provider Ideal: A Sociological Investigation of Job Insecurity and Shattered Hegemony Among Working-Class Indian Youth

Abstract

The male provider ideal remains central to the social construction of masculinity in India, linking financial provision with masculine respectability, adulthood and familial responsibility. However, employment insecurity and labour-market precarity create tensions between these expectations and the economic realities of working-class young men. This paper examines how insecure employment challenges masculine identity, social recognition, marriage expectations and family relationships. Drawing on R. W. Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity and Robert Agnew’s General Strain Theory, it explores the contradictions between socially prescribed breadwinner responsibilities and unequal access to secure livelihoods. The paper introduces shattered hegemony as an analytical concept describing the persistence of the male provider ideal despite the unstable material conditions required to fulfil it. Rather than interpreting masculine insecurity as individual inadequacy, the discussion situates it within class inequality, precarious employment and patriarchal socialisation. It also considers how working-class young men negotiate these pressures through conventional masculine expectations and changing understandings of economic and familial responsibility. The paper argues that the crisis of the male provider ideal offers a sociological perspective on transformations in masculinity, labour and family relations in India, challenging the assumption that masculine worth should depend primarily on financial provision.