Men in male-dominated organizations and their encounter with women intruders

In this article we focus upon the impact of women's entry into a masculine profession like engineering on the making of masculinities in different workplaces. Our empirical basis is a research project on Norwegian male and female graduate engineers and their career development in different work organizations. We find four groups of men in different positions in the organizations and with different reactions to and behaviour towards the women; the cavaliers, the competitors, the comrades and the comets. Using the concept of gendering of organizations we place the different types of men within different types of organizations to understand the alliances that give women good opportunities in some organizations and poor opportunities in others.Gendering organization masculinities