Umeå University's logo

Purpose

This study aims to deepen the understanding of inequality regimes in male-dominated industries, specifically in Swedish forestry and mining, by exploring how conceptions of gender, class and place are articulated and intertwined when doing gender equality in these organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

The article draws on empirical material from four research and development projects inspired by a feminist action research methodology.

Findings

This paper shows how gender equality works in these male-dominated organizations simultaneously constructing gender, class and place. When men are at the focal point of gender equality, our empirical findings suggest that blue-collar workers in rural areas are described as “being the problem” for gender inequality in these organizations. Addressing specific groups such as women or blue-collar workers in rural areas is not enough to challenge the inequality regimes that exist in these organizations, since a unilateral focus on certain groups leads to skewed problem formulations.

Originality/value

Research on gender equality work and its relation to intersectionality in male-dominated industries is limited, and by focusing on men and masculinities, this paper contributes to knowledge concerning gender equality in male-dominated industrial organizations.

Forestry and mining constitutes an important part of Swedish basic industry. These industries are heavily male-dominated and are expressing an ambition to become more gender equal and less gender-segregated, arguing that this could strengthen their competitiveness in a number of areas. In this article we explore how company representatives construct gender equality as a business case and discuss how these constructions restrict and/or enable gender equality in these organizations. Departing from a social constructivist understanding of how language (re)produces gendered power relations in the workplace, the empirical basis of this paper consists of eight interviews with respondents who possess special insights into, and being of strategic importance to, gender equality issues in forestry and mining companies. In our analysis we found three dominant dimensions of the business case of gender equality Marketing (as) gender equality, Uncovering the male norm and Gender equality as a depoliticized value. We conclude that the business case framing facilitates for the companies to engage in issues of gender equality. However, issues concerning conflicting interests and power relations seem to be difficult to address within the business case discourse. This we argue affects and shapes the terms for gender equality in these organizations

Using forestry and mining as empirical cases, the chapter analyses to what extent gender equality efforts in men-dominated industries can be understood as organizational innovations and how the degree of newness in these efforts affects the prospects of evoking structural changes in the gendered patterns of these industries. In the studied gender-equality efforts in one major forestry company and one major mining company in Sweden, carried out during the last ten years, innovative measures of creative workshops, cooperation with gender researchers, and challenging masculinities are identified. Their level of contextual innovativeness is high, although their universal innovativeness is low. The gendered aspects of the innovativeness encompass identification of hitherto unmet needs of gender equality among individuals, organizations and society to some extent. The prospects of the measures evoking structural change in a transformative way vary, with challenging masculinities exposing the highest potential, but only if thoroughly realized.