Gender roles in a masculine occupation: Military men and women’s differential negotiation of the work-family interface

Abstract

Gender plays a key role in the attitudes and behaviors exhibited by individuals in both their work and family domains. Just as individuals can lie anywhere on a continuum from masculine to feminine, occupations can be similarly gender-typed. We argue that norms related to masculinity (vs. femininity) can influence one’s selfselection into an occupation and one’s work attitudes and behaviors once associated with an occupation. Since men and women associated with masculine occupations have unique work and family expectations, they also experience and negotiate the work-family interface differently than do individuals in more gender-neutral organizations. In this chapter, we use the military as an example of a gendered occupation “a masculine one to be specific. We introduce the Masculine Occupations’ Gender Role Model to provide a theoretical framework of how the gender of employees in a gendered occupation can influence attitudes and behavior in both the work and family domains.