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Introduction: Why Men, Masculinities and Career(s)?

Glass ceilings, the gender pay gap, leaky pipelines, old boy networks, calls for women to lean in – the seemingly never-ending deluge of reports of workplace inequalities and sexual harassment suggests that men’s homosocial networks are alive and well and an enduring norm in twenty-first century work cultures. Recent critical representations and examinations of the workplace leave little doubt about the fact that stale gender norms and conventions still prevail. After the #MeToo movement rocked Hollywood and the (Western) world, critical voices against harassment of women in the workplace spread globally (most notably perhaps Bollywood and the Indian media industry). Similarly, the #KuToo movement (after kutsu, and kutsū, denoting shoes and pain respectively) made waves in the Japanese media, drawing attention to the sartorial restrictions placed on women’s presence in the workplace. Despite increasing numbers of women entering the global workforce since the 1980s, the most lucrative careers, especially in the private sector, still primarily seem to be more easily accessible to men (Moghadam 1999). Scholars have pointed towards intrinsically gendered practices and power-imbalances as characteristics of many modern workplaces for decades. A more analytical approach to men’s and women’s ‘place’ in the context of work is (re)gaining momentum outside research circles as well. While noting that workplaces and organisations remain largely implicitly masculine is politically pertinent, it does little to elucidate how masculinity and careers are linked, how workers do masculinity and how masculinity does cultural work for the reproduction and/or contestation of (post)industrialism, capitalism and neoliberalism. This book focuses on the multiple and diverse masculinities ‘at work’ in the processes of professionalisation and career management that typify modern working life. Spanning both historical approaches to the rise of ‘profession’ as a marker of masculinity, and critical approaches to the current structures of management, employment, and workplace hierarchies, we set out to question what role men and masculinities play in cultural understandings, affective experiences, and mediatised representations of a professional ‘career’. The collection contributes to understanding a range of men’s practices and masculinities associated with work and careers as well as the diversity of social, cultural, and professional contexts in which they take shape.