The Naturalization of the Gender Segregation in a Danish Bank

Abstract

Administrative jobs created today are often numerically dominated by women. But how and why do such new jobs become women’s work? By looking at changes in administrative work over the last 100 years, and going in depth with the creation of new types of administrative jobs in the financial sector, the article discusses various elements of this ‘naturalization’ of the gendered division of work. A detailed analysis of interviews with women in a bank department, which produces documents – a new department that primarily employs women – provides insight into how this naturalization occurs. In this department there are obvious interactions between conceptions of gender and conceptions of work. To understand and make sense of these interactions the women interviewed draw on historically embedded gender stereotypes, e.g. that women primarily are caretakers that women are good at multitasking, and that women like routine work.