Male public librarians experiences of working within a female-dominated profession

The main purpose of this masters thesis is to investigate how male public librarians experience working in a female-dominated area by interviewing eight male public librarians. We want to find if our informants have experienced, or are experiencing, that the library users react differently to the male librarians, as opposed to the female librarians, with focus on possible prejudices. Besides this we want to investigate if the male librarians have had any reactions from their colleagues based on the fact that they are men working in a female profession. We are using three theories in this thesis. The first theory is based on an article by Christine L. Williams about mens and womens experiences of working in a female profession. The second theory is based on Marie Nordberg´s study on hegemony. The third and last theory is based on an article by Yvonne Hirdman about gender. The conclusion of this masters thesis is that our informants feel that they have to work harder and be better then their female colleagues to fit into a female-dominated job. Another conclusion is that male librarians do not get more reactions just because they are men than female librarians from the library users. The third conclusion is that our informants have not experienced any reactions from their colleagues about them being men working in a female profession.Uppsatsnivå: