"I might be a typical woman in a man’s body" : - A qualitative study about male social workers experiences of working in a female dominated work

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine male social workers experiences of working in a female dominated work. The aim with this study was to find out how men perceive working with mostly women and how this effects their construction of masculinity. The theories that have been used in this study are a social constructive perspective on gender, Chodorows (1995) Theory of Socialization and Connells (2008) Theory of Masculinities. The method used in this study is qualitative interviews based on the experiences of five male social workers in Sweden.The interviews have been recorded and retailed in text in its full version, to enable analysis out of the above mentioned theories and earlier studies. The result of the study shows that the men in this study experience mostly benefits from working with women and they feel appreciated as being men. At the sametime they experience some difficulties when it comes to communication, where they perceive the female colleagues to use a more subtle way of communicating.The male social workers in this study also experience that they get certain expectations due to their gender. These expectations consist in being able to deal with clients that are aggressive and another expectation is to function as a male role model for their clients. The way the male social workers in this study construct their masculinity in this female dominated work, consists of a differentiation between them and the female colleagues. This differentiation is influenced by a hegemonic masculinity that can be described as the male stereotype, which builds on a subordination of women (Connell 2008).