"Kön har ingen betydelse men könsblandning är bra": "könsgörande" i två professionella sammanhang

Abstract

The artide discusses how respondents from two professional groups - medical doctors and family law secretaries - "do" gender when they talk about and (re)present themselves in their professional and organisational contexts. The respondents' stories about themselves as professionals and their professional work are analysed as gendered and gendering organisational practices. On the one hand gender is perceived as irrelevant in these professional contexts. On the other hand the respondents simultaneously talk about a mix of genders in positive terms. The paradox mention above is our analytical point of entry and by discussing how "gender neutrality" and "the good mix of genders" are constructed and related to each other we want to contribute to an increased knowledge about tightly interwoven construction processes of gender, organisation and profession. In the artide we show different ways of reading and presenting inter-views, exemplify the variety of processes of gender construction in our empirical material as well as show how the analysis of one "case" of doing gender can be elaborated. A complementary gender dichotomy seems to be a culturally hegemonic frame for doing gender and it seems to be a stable condition for the organisation-, profession- and genderconstructing processes we are discussing here. It is primarily stability that is in focus in the article. However, we also point out examples of how hegemonic constructions of gender are challenged. Through the analysis we demonstrate among other things how closely the processes mentioned above are interwoven with a naturalised heterosexuality. We also show how the paradox - "gender is irrelevant, but gender matters" - is dissolved either through the construction of gender as something else than professionalism, or through the construction of gender differences as contributing to professionalism. Regardless of whether gender is "done" irrelevant or relevant to professionalism, gendered power structures remains a nonissue.