En av gutta: Kvinner og klær i mannsdominerte arbeiderklasseyrker

What do sex and clothes mean for women working in male-dominated professions? The authors of this article argue that women must downplay their gender and their sexuality by covering their bodies in men’s clothes to signal that they are at work to do their job. How do these women negotiate their femininity? What notions of gender neutrality – and gender differences and similarities – must they relate to?
This article is about women who have chosen to work in male-dominated professions (most of them in so-called blue-collar occupations) and their male colleagues, focusing on how gender is highlighted and communicated by women in what have traditionally been working-class male jobs. We have looked in particular at the ideas associated with clothing and appearance, and the practices that highlight how women both mask and mark themselves as women. We see these practices as acts negotiated to confront the questions of how, and in what ways, women can be «one of the guys». This is important because the women's work situations are largely centered around the notions of men as «real men» in traditional working-class occupations.