Abstract
Gender plays a key role in the attitudes and behaviors exhibited by individuals in both their work and family domains. Just as individuals can lie anywhere on a continuum from masculine to feminine, occupations can be similarly gender-typed. We argue that norms related to masculinity (vs. femininity) can influence one’s selfselection into an occupation and one’s work attitudes and behaviors once associated with an occupation. Since men and women associated with masculine occupations have unique work and family expectations, they also experience and negotiate the work-family interface differently than do individuals in more gender-neutral organizations. In this chapter, we use the military as an example of a gendered occupation – a masculine one to be specific. We introduce the Masculine Occupations’ Gender Role Model to provide a theoretical framework of how the gender of employees in a gendered occupation can influence attitudes and behavior in both the work and family domains.
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Notes
- 1.
This exclusion of women in combat jobs is changing in 2016 with new Department of Defense policies that will allow women to hold combat positions.
- 2.
Statistics on the Coast Guard were included in this discussion of the military, though they are no longer a branch of the Department of Defense.
- 3.
We are not saying here that being LGB is a choice. We are merely noting that some individuals may see it as such, and therefore stigmatize LGB individuals accordingly.
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Huffman, A., Culbertson, S., Barbour, J. (2015). Gender Roles in a Masculine Occupation: Military Men and Women’s Differential Negotiation of the Work–Family Interface. In: Mills, M. (eds) Gender and the Work-Family Experience. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08891-4_14
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