Pojkar bör och pojkar gör : Om maskulinitetsskapande i gymnasiet

Sammanfattning: This thesis aims to spread some light over the phenomena of gender construction in the upper secondary school. The background of this thesis is the gender gap in education. Girls are more successful in school and receive better grades than boys. The explanation that is given for this is that pupils are limited by far to rigid gender roles (DEJA 2010). The question is how these gender roles – and specifically masculinity – are constructed. It was decided that a qualitative study would be the most suitable. To try to find out more about how masculinity is constructed it was important to visit the source – the classroom. For six days an observer sat in the classroom of two different upper secondary schools to study how the pupils shaped masculinity together. However, an observation is limited to what the observer can see and how the observer interprets the situation. In order to give the pupils an own voice a survey was created. Theories of masculinity and homosociality as described by Connell (1999), Kimmel (2010) and Bird (1996) were mostly used to understand the events in the classroom and the answers of the survey. The findings of the study are that masculinity is constructed in relation to other pupils and teachers in the classroom and is not a fixed notion. However, the construction of masculinity is not only limited to the realm of the classroom but also depends upon how masculinity is portrayed elsewhere.