Kvinna, chef, bibliotekarie. Triss i stereotyper?

Sammanfattning: Public libraries are mainly employing women and have female managers. According to theories based upon so-cial construction we create our roles together in our society. The role of a manager has for a long time been viewed as the role of a man. The objective of my thesis is to gain knowledge on how a few women that work as managers in public libraries perceive and describe their roles. A parallel aim is to let a few future librarians de-scribe their managers and their own views on leadership, with a focus on gender issues. My questions are the following, how do the women construct their roles as managers of public libraries?, how do the female students describe the role as a female manager of a public library, and their own managers?, can stereotype views and attributes be distinguished in my informants tales on leadership and gender?The starting point of this thesis is theories of social construction of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, the thought that we shape our world through social interaction, mainly through our language. The theories of Yvonne Hirdman, regarding gender power structure, offers the political backdrop for my thesis. Alice Eagly has re-searched around leader stereotypes, leadership styles and gender. From her and her peers I take with me theories that claim that the leader stereotype is gendered male.The material I have used to answer my questions are interviews with ten informants, all of them women working at public libraries, five of them managers and five students. I have conducted structured interviews with open questions that I have then looked at by means of a method where different factors are intertwined, mainly language, social situations, political factors and theory. All these then used to interpret the empirical evidence. The basis of the method is interpretation and reflection.I found that my informants construe an image of the role as a woman and a manager of a public library as a complex role that does not fall into one unambiguous gender stereotype. They describe their one manager roles and their managers with attributes and characteristics that in recent research has been assigned to both genders. I could nevertheless identify the use of strategies that according to Eagly et al is used by women in manager roles to prevent them from suffering negative criticism or other consequences solely because of the combination of their gender and position.