Business Masculinities

The idea of “transnational business masculinity ” is explored in life-history interviews with Australian managers. Their world is male-dominated but has a strong conscious-ness of change. An intense and stressful labor process creates multiple linkages among managers and subjects them to mutual scrutiny, a force for gender conservatism. In a context of affluence and anxiety, managers tend to treat their life as an enterprise and self-consciously manage bodies and emotions as well as finances. Economic globaliza-tion has heightened their insecurity and changed older patterns of business; different modes of participating in transnational business can be identified. Managerial masculin-ity is still centrally related to power, but changes from older bourgeois masculinity can also be detected: tolerance of diversity and heightened uncertainty about one’s place in the world and gender order. Some support is found for the transnational business mascu-linity hypothesis, but a spectrum of gender patterns must be recognized in an increasingly complex business environment. Key words: manager; masculinity; globalization; business; hegemony; gender rela-tions; technology; embodiment; career; powe