“Winnie the Pooh versus Foosball – do we still categorize?”

Sammanfattning: Despite the current attempt of scholars over the last decades to liberate literature from the dualistic, binary-minded gender thinking by presenting multiple concepts of gender identity construction (cf. Pullen & Simpson 2009; Linstead & Pullen 2006), our society is still constructed by the differentiation of women and men based on stereotypes (Nentwich 2006; Billing & Alvesson 2000). To examine this differentiation the focus of this study is a comparison between a technical occupation which is commonly considered as male dominated (Kelan 2010; Chambers 2005), and a creative occupation which is mostly favored by women (Chambers 2005; Kelan 2010; Billing & Alvesson 2000). As this distinction can be understood as an obvious stereotyped gender differentiation (Fournier & Smith 2006; Kelan 2010; Billing & Alvesson 2000) our emphasis was to critically analyze how or if this distinction is estimated and lived by the interviewees within two different occupational fields. This original research purpose was though extended and was further evolved during the analysis and resulted into two continuative questions: “In which situation is gender threatened or protected?” and “When do people feel the need to gender leadership?”