Gendered Narratives – about the transition to work life of graduates within the humanities

Abstract

The article explores how gendered patterns are performed in narratives of graduates within the humanities who tell about their transition to work life and discuss how these patterns might shape the (im)possibilities in their professional lives. The article draws on Judith Butler’s concept of performativity which offers a conceptualization of how the subject is subjectivized through performative acts, and how these patterns of actions are embedded in discursive gender categories (Butler, 1993, 2010). The study is based on narratives from eleven graduates with different majors within the humanities. The analysis shows that the gendered patterns center three contradictions: fate and strategy, struggles and success, and confidence and lack thereof in competencies. It is primarily men’s narratives that are characterized as strategic, successful and confident in their competencies, while the women’s narratives are marked by chance, struggles and uncertainty in their competencies. By comparing the findings from these contemporary cases with previous research we show that the ideal performance of graduates within the humanities are organized through a masculine ethic. An ethic that enables these narratives as part of the reproduction of the historical norms which fix men and woman in specific roles as graduates, and which privilege men.