This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by HENSON, K. D. Articles by ROGERS, J. K. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

"WHY MARCIA YOU'VE CHANGED!"

Male Clerical Temporary Workers Doing Masculinity in a Feminized Occupation

Loyola University of Chicago

JACKIE KRASAS ROGERS

The Pennsylvania State University

This research provides a look at men doing gender in the highly feminized context of temporary clerical employment. Male clerical temporaries, as with other men who cross over into "women's work," face institutionalized challenges to their sense of masculinity. In particular, male clerical temporary workers face gender assessment—highlighting their failure to live up to the ideals of hegemonic masculinity. The resulting gender strategies these men adopt reveal how male clerical temporary workers "do masculinity"—often in a collaborative performance shaped by the gendered expectations of their agencies, their clients, and even themselves—to reassert the feminine identification of the job while at the same time rejecting its application to them. Paradoxically, rather than disrupting the gender order, the gender strategies used by these male clerical temporaries help to reproduce and naturalize the gendered organization of work and reinvigorate hegemonic masculinity and its domination over women and subaltern men.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				K. L. Ashcraft Appreciating the 'work' of discourse: occupational identity and difference as organizing mechanisms in the case of commercial airline pilots Discourse & Communication, February 1, 2007; 1(1): 9 - 36. [Abstract] [PDF]

				M. Ollilainen and T. Calasanti Metaphors at Work: Maintaining the Salience of Gender in Self-Managing Teams Gender Society, February 1, 2007; 21(1): 5 - 27. [Abstract] [PDF]

				A. Hanser The Gendered Rice Bowl: The Sexual Politics of Service Work in Urban China Gender Society, October 1, 2005; 19(5): 581 - 600. [Abstract] [PDF]

				B. Montemurro Add Men, Don't Stir: Reproducing Traditional Gender Roles in Modern Wedding Showers Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, February 1, 2005; 34(1): 6 - 35. [Abstract] [PDF]

				K. Dellinger Masculinities in "Safe" and "Embattled" Organizations: Accounting for Pornographic and Feminist Magazines Gender Society, October 1, 2004; 18(5): 545 - 566. [Abstract] [PDF]