Show Us Your Frilly, Pink Underbelly: Men Administrative Assistants Doing Masculinities and Femininity

• In Event: 256 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Female-Dominated Occupations

Abstract

Research on men tokens (or numerical minorities) at work has focused on the processes by which men try to claim hegemonic masculine identities for themselves and how workplace interactants support or reject these attempts. Token theory, however, has paid less attention to non-hegemonic masculinities, in contrast to masculinity studies. This paper uses interviews with men administrative assistants to develop a more comprehensive typology of men tokens’ gender performances and their significance for gender inequality. The author presents a four part typology: hegemonic masculinity, alternative masculinity, critical masculinity, and male femininity. The types are differentiated along two axes: support for hegemonic masculinity and support for hierarchical, binary gender.

Author

• Jessica Lotus Seeley, University of Michigan