300351 Work Devotion and Masculinity among Executive Men (BS) (WiSe 2014/2015)

Toxic feelings of work-to-family conflict and overwork persist in United States companies (Aumann, Galinsky, and Matos 2011, Schieman, Milkie, and Glavin 2009). Much research on gender and work examines why so many women "opt out" or, more accurately, feel pushed out of full-time careers. This seminar examines the flip side of this question by studying why some men opt in to intensive work. This is an understudied issue that is crucial to our understanding of work-family conflict. Although we often think of work-family conflict and "opting out" as women's problems, they are in fact men's issues, rooted in cultural understandings of masculinity and work commitment (Blair-Loy 2003, Williams 2010). Although my research and findings are focused on the U.S., there is evidence of similar processes in other national contexts (e.g., Norway, and Germany).
In contrast to women's experience, marriage and fatherhood increase men's work involvement. A growing share of professional and managerial men is working longer hours than in previous decades (Jacobs and Gerson 2004, Kuhn and Lozano 2008). This seminar examines the under-studied question of why so many men opt into intensive careers. Although some men may wish to spend more time in daily family caregiving (Kaufman 2013), there are significant ideological and social structural limits to this involvement (Gerson 1993, Hertz 1988, Williams, Blair-Loy, and Berdahl 2013b).
Workplace conditions and cultural orientations vary by social class (Lamont 1992, Lamont 2000, Shows and Gerstel 2009, Williams, Blair-Loy, and Berdahl 2013a) and by nationality (Lyng and Halrynjo 2009; Lamont 1992). I study one class group: executive men in the United States. A study of these elites is important because they have the power to enforce long hours among subordinates and thereby create pressure for professional men to opt in and for women to opt out.
My previous research used a moral cultural lens, as an alternative to rational action approaches, to explain why some women executives maintained and others abandoned their careers after motherhood. My approach to fatherhood focuses on the moralized cultural understandings that support the continuing practice of long hours among executive men. Rather than focusing solely on the personal choices of particular men, this seminar examines how workplace cultures and structures shape individual actions and goals. At the same time, I recognize the creativity by which people use moral understandings to justify the work-family conditions at hand and to interpret them as meaningful and honorable.
The seminar will further discuss this issue in terms of the literatures on Work-Life, Gender and Masculinity, Cultural Sociology and Economic Sociology.