What can we learn about women’s organizational challenges by talking to men about gender roles and work-life? We attend to this question through an interview study with male executives, providing a close interpretive analysis of their talk about employees, wives, children, the division of domestic labor, and work-life policy. The study illustrates how executives’ tacit hesitancy about women’s participation in organizational life is closely connected to preferred gendered relationships in the private sphere. The case reveals a story of meaning in movement—aversive sexism marked by flickers of transformation—demonstrating how talk can both reveal and disrupt enduring gender scripts, and why hearing male voices is integral to addressing women’s work-life dilemmas.

Purpose-"Dirty work" is an embodied, emotional activity, and may best be expressed through narrative thick description. The purpose of this paper is to employ creative analytic techniques through a "messy text" for better understanding the tacit knowledge and emotionality of dirty work and dirty research. The vignettes, based upon ethnographic fieldwork with US Border Patrol agents, viscerally reveal the embodied emotions of dirty work and doing dirty research. Design/methodology/approach-The research draws on a two and a half year ethnography of the US Border Patrol in which the first author engaged in participant observation, shadowing, and interviews. Based upon the iterative data analysis and narrative writing techniques using verbatim quotations and field data, the essay provides a series of vignettes that explore the multi-faceted feelings of dirty work. Findings-Tacit knowledge about dirty work is unmasked and known through experiences of the body as well as emotional reactions to the scene. A table listing the emotions that emerged in these stories supplements the narrative text. The analysis shows how communication about emotions provides a sense-making tool that, in turn, elucidates both the challenges and the potential highlights of doing dirty work. In particular, findings suggest that emotional ambiguity the "moral emotions" of guilt and shame may serve as sense-making tools that can help in ethical decision making and a re-framing of challenging situations. Originality/value-A field immersion alongside dirty workers, coupled with a creative writing approach, provides access to the fleeting, embodied, and fragmented nature of tacit knowledgeanswering the questions of what dirty work feels like. The essay provides a behind the scenes exploration of US Border Patrol agents-a profession that is alternately stigmatized or hidden from public view. Finally, the piece provides a self-reflexive account of the messy realities of conducting "dirty research" in a way that is open ended and embodied.

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Poised within the borderlands between two nations, Border Patrol agents form the largest federal law enforcement organization in the nation, yet the public knows very little about agents themselves. Agents complete a variety of job duties that may be viewed as "dirty work," or work that society considers physically, socially, or morally objectionable. They also perform emotional duties and emotional labor, which are often stigmatized by the public. This interpretive ethnographic research provides a descriptive portrayal of the Patrol and extends theory in the areas of emotional laborthe emotional performances required to carry out certain jobs-and dirty work. This article asserts that emotion and emotional labor are emotionally tainted, and that engaging emotion provides one strategy for workers to make sense of this type of dirty work. A definition and framework for emotional taint are offered, extending the current discussion of both emotion and taint at work.

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