The purpose of the reported study was to explore how 245 municipal middle managersperceived their psychosocial and physical work environments, and to examine psychosomaticreactions and job satisfaction in departments engaged in di!erent types of activity, also tocompare male and female managers in these respects. The way in which psychosomaticreactions and job satisfaction were related to the psychosocial and physical work environmentswas also investigated. The results indicated a di!erence between departments depending on thetype of activity. Departments concerned with care and education, i.e. care of the elderly, childcare and schools showed a tendency to lower values for psychosocial work environment factorsand more psychosomatic reactions than the departments geared more towards maintenanceand production, i.e. street maintenance, the power plant department and the recreation o$ce.In the departments concerned with children, female managers were in a majority. In the streetmaintenance department, the recreation o$ce and the power plant department, male managerspredominated. Compared to the men, the women had a higher level of education, lower salaries,more reactions of a psychosomatic nature, lower job satisfaction and a less satisfying psychosocialwork environment. The only department with an equal number of male and femalemanagers was the schools department. Here there were no di!erences between men and womenin the factors studied. Two partial correlations were computed in order to separate theimportance of type of activity and sex to the work environment factors and outcome variables.This indicated that the type of activity was more important than biological sex. The genderingof work activities is therefore also discussed and further investigations are suggested. ( 2000Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.