This workshop focuses on the particular experiences of men who work in women’s professions, e.g. are working professionally with care and welfare work.

A historically crucial profession for women has been to maintain ‘work with humans’, i.e. trades in which human relations are maintained, typically caring and nursing, and education of little children. Women have most often maintained these professions, and they are still often discursively treated as tasks especially for women. This also means that men who maintain these kinds of jobs are often met with certain expectations, and that the experience that their identifications with the job are problematized. This workshop investigates men’s experiences with women’s work and the particular experiences which men get through this practice.

Questions central in this workshop will e.g. be:

Which consequences do the special expectations which men doing care work meet have, and how do such expectations influence men’s practices?

Are there special practical or organizational/managemental orientations or obstacles for men, which are caused by gender expectations?

What do men in women’s work/male caregivers do to avoid stereotyping or stigmatizations?

Does the gender of the caregiver have consequenses for the character or quality of the performance or relation to the client?

Can men’s occupation with these kinds of work in itself be regarded as enhancing gender equality and/or more transformative or pluralizing contructions of masculinity, or do they primarily contain elements which reproduce an existing unequal gender order?

Workshop participants and titles of paper presentations:

Ph.D. Jonas Sandberg, Vårdvetenskap, Ersta Sköndal Högskola, Stockholm, and Ph.D. Henrik Eriksson, Hälsa Vård och Välfärd, Mälardalens Högskola, Eskilstuna, Sweden: Bortom omsorgsnormen – Alder män i okonventionella omsorgsrelationer.

Ph.D.-student Marcus Herz, Örebro University: Man och socialarbetare – Bilder av män och manligheter i Socialt arbete.

Lektor Per Ekstrand, Hälsa, vård och väldfärd, Mälardalens, and plejeudvikler Esa Kumpula, Högskola/Rättspsykiatriska Kliniken, Sweden: Men and masculinities in forensic psychiatric care.

Ph.D. Steen Baagøe Nielsen, Roskilde University: Men in caring professions.

Download abstracts for this workshop here.