Observers Within: The Role of Culture in Gender Knowledge Among Men in High-Tech

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 21: Gender Inequality

Abstract

This article explores how gender inequality is reproduced among men who explicitly endorse egalitarian values, diversity discourse, and inclusive managerial norms. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with mid-level male managers in the U.S. high-tech industry, it shows that these men possess elaborate gender knowledge. They recognize gender disparities, critique exclusionary masculine archetypes, and frame inequality as a moral problem shaped by post-#MeToo public culture. However, this awareness coexists with everyday practices that inadvertently sustain gendered exclusion, particularly caution, restraint, and withdrawal from informal interaction with women. Integrating scholarship on hybrid masculinities with feminist standpoint theory, this article makes two main contributions: first, it reframes hybrid masculinity as an epistemic formation grounded in culturally available gender knowledge; and second, it extends feminist epistemology by conceptualizing culture as a generative mechanism shaping what counts as responsible conduct at work. Conceptualizing these men’s location as “observers within,” the article shows how non-reflexive gender awareness can reproduce inequality in ostensibly progressive work settings.

Authors

• Tair Karazi-Presler, Bar Ilan University

• Netta Kahana, Harvard University