New Men, New Careers: Orientations and Values in Gender aTypical Occupations

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New Men, New Careers Orientations and Values in
Gender a-Typical Occupations

• Ruth Simpson
• Brunel Business School

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Background

• Persistently high degree of gender based
  occupational segregation
• 85 service workers
• 79 administrative staff are women
• 84 machine operatives
• 69 managers/senior officials are men (EOC,
  2003)
• But a small but growing number of men who cross
  over to female occupations

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Explaining Occupational Choice

• Trait Theory (desire for match between personal
  traits and job requirements)
• Circumscription and Compromise (desire for gender
  role compatibility)
• Gender socialisation processes

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Why choose a non traditional career

• Self fulfilment not available in sex-typed jobs
• Career advancement
• Desire for professional status
• Limiting factors societal and personal barriers
  low pay and low prestige challenges to identity
  and sexuality

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The Study

• Focus
• dynamics of career entry
• career orientation
• experience of role strain
• 40 in-depth interviews with male workers from 4
  occupational groups primary school teaching,
  nursing, cabin crew, librarianship.

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Entry dynamics

• Seekers (active, first best choice)
• Finders (passive, second best choice)
• Settlers (active, first best choice career
  change from more traditional occupation high
  career satisfaction)

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Career Orientation

• Some desire for leadership positions (seekers and
  finders) and evidence of role pressure
• Desire to remain close to professional practice
  (settlers)
• Strong orientation towards intrinsic rewards
• Overall, benefits to men as tokens in
  non-traditional roles (e.g. career effect,
  assumed authority effect, special consideration
  effect)

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Role Strain, Role Pressure

• Conflicts between gender and work identity
  problematic relationship with notions of
  hegemonic masculinity
• Some implications for self worth i.e. feelings of
  embarrassment and shame (likely to lead to exit
  decisions) but high degree of job satisfaction
  for other (nurses, teachers)
• Negative judgements from male peers
• Overall, some conflict between private self
  (self worth, esteem) and public presentation of
  self and the job

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Strategies to reduce role strain

• Re-labelling
• Emphasis on masculine components of the job
• Distance from the feminine
• Choice of specialism

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Conclusions

• Notion of fast track or straight through
  careers may not hold for all men
• Men may be seeking to develop the affective
  domain of their lives and have lower levels of
  status needs
• Developmental benefits of visibility
• Implications of role strain and role pressure.
• Gender work to align the job with dominant
  notions of masculinity