Author Identifier

Qiang Li

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8185-9487

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

School

School of Arts and Humanities

First Supervisor

Jamal Barnes

Second Supervisor

Elizabeth Reid Boyd

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is much more than a health crisis. It affects all segments of humanity. To world leaders, this pandemic has become a kaleidoscope that can reflect their political leadership and vision. In the United States of America, the president, as the most masculine post in government, is duty-bound to take adequate measures and make consequential policies against public health crises. Moreover, the president’s discursive practice is immediately persuasive in shaping public emotion, social cognition of reality, gender stratification and vice versa. By contrast, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have presented observably divergent responses to this pandemic and their corresponding distinctive leadership styles, which prompted further contemplation of the nexus between their masculinities and presidential leadership styles. The goal-directed inclusion of Barack Obama and his double-edged response to the Ebola outbreak augmented the panorama of presidential masculinities. The relationality of masculinity construction was consequently underscored; fathers of the nation were thus metaphorized.

The limited research on masculinity in relation to U.S. presidential leadership in the West and China further invigorated this study to investigate how the varying masculinities of these three leaders were accordingly constructed through public remarks and presidential discourse. This study integrated Chinese yin-yang and wen-wu masculinity theories to balance and harmonise the imbalanced political leadership during health crises. This study valued the combination of content and discourse analysis to decipher their remarks on Ebola and COVID-19 that have extended to multidimensional correlatives of race, gender, class, and nationality. Grounded on the exhaustive decoding of sampled remarks, this study identified and categorised Obama’s more feminised masculinity, Trump’s cobra-effect masculinity and Biden’s centrist masculinity. Ultimately, this study proposed the emergence of a Global Masculinity Theory to challenge prevailing norms of masculinity, emphasising how Chinese masculinity theories help encourage gender equality and promote global harmony in times of crisis.

DOI

10.25958/tdhs-b682

Access Note

Access to this thesis is embargoed until 4th April 2026

Available for download on Saturday, April 04, 2026

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