Volunteering masculinities in search and rescue work: Is there “a place for girls on the team”?

Abstract

This article explores performative enactments of gender at work in a UK-based Search and Rescue voluntary organization, QuakeRescue. Based on ethnographic research, we analyze how gender is performatively constituted in this male-dominated setting, focusing in particular on how hegemonic masculinity is enacted through bodies, physicality, and technical competence. Our findings show how performative acts, predicated on essentialist understandings of superior masculine bodies, constructed femininity as limited, deficient, and Other, legitimizing the assigning of mundane, routine tasks to women volunteers. By endorsing women's presence, albeit as low-status team members, there was sufficient recognition to ensure that sedimented practices of "doing gender" at QuakeRescue remained largely unquestioned. We conclude that hegemonic masculinity predicated on bodily practices in male-dominated workspaces is oppressive in its effects, and until this is recognized and acknowledged, transformative potential is limited.

A woman’s got to be what a woman’s got to be? How managerial assessment centers perpetuate gender inequality

“…Our findings suggest that the MAC Gender Paradox may be the result of over-evaluation of feminine women candidates out of sympathy for their predicament and commitment to the gender ideology of the organization. Our respondents drew from discourses of both masculinity and femininity to legitimize their decision-making in ways that maintain a gendered logic of men as dominant and women as weak (Weller et al, 2021). They expressed compassion for female managerial candidates who struggled in light of the biased assessment center and reported compensating these candidates through higher evaluations.…”

“…; Greed, 2000; Kark et al, 2016; Miller et al, 2019). In these organizations, hegemonic masculinity emphasizing competition, aggression, and self-mastery serves as a mechanism for excluding women and sustaining their subordinate position (Weller et al, 2021). Non-inclusive cultures, in which traditional gender roles are prevalent and legitimate, add another hurdle to women’s advancement as they pose ideals of femininity as domestic and subordinate to men that run counter to the leadership role and upward mobility in management (e.g., Kark et al, 2022).…”

Questing for meaningfulness through narrative identity work: The helpers, the heroes and the hurt

“…A specific point of interest here is that, arguably, volunteers’ hero identity, narratives – which constituted them as self-confident, energetic, worthy and successful – might be regarded as ‘a sort of narcissistic elitism’ (Lair et al, 2008: 172). These claims are also susceptible to critiques that highlight how hero narratives serve as ‘models for privileged masculine behaviour’ (Boon, 2005: 303; Weller et al, 2021).…”

Gendered impact of caregiving on older nonmedical healthcare workers

“…Care tends to be constructed as women's work, based on the essentialist assumption that women are naturally caring. Men working in feminine professions have to cope with not conforming to heteronormative practices and with their masculinity being "subordinate" (Weller et al, 2021). Men use various strategies to cope with the feminine nature of the profession -emphasising leadership, technical skills, absolute dedication to work, and other masculine characteristics (Smith et al, 2020).…”