Serving hamburgers and selling insurance: Gender, Work, and Identity in Interactive Service Jobs

Abstract

Through an analysis of two highly routinized interactive service jobs, fast food service and insurance sales, this article explores the interrelationship of work, gender, and identity. While notions of proper gender behavior are quite flexible, gender-segregated service jobs reinforce the conception of gender differences as natural. The illusion that gender-typed interaction is an expression of workers' inherent natures is sustained, even in situations in which workers' appearances, attitudes, and demeanors are closely controlled by their employers. Gender-typed work has different meanings for women and men, however, because of differences in the cultural valuation of behavior considered appropriate to each gender. © 1991, SAGE PUBLICATIONS. All rights reserved.