"Why Marcia you've changed?" Male clerical temporary workers doing masculinity in a feminized occupation

This research provides a look at men doing Render in the highly feminized c ontext of temporary clerical employment Male clerical temporaries, as with other men who cross over into "women's work" face institutionalized challen ges to their sense of masculinity. In particular; male clerical temporary w orkers face gender assessment-highlighting: their failure to live up to the ideals of hegemonic masculinity. The resulting gender strategies these men adopt reveal how male clerical temporary workers "do masculinity" -often i n a collaborative performance shaped by the gendered expectations of their agencies, their clients, and even themselves-to reassert the feminine ident ification of the job while at the same rime rejecting its application to th em. Paradoxically rather than disrupting the gender order, the gender strat egies used by these mule clerical temporaries help to reproduce and natural ize the gendered organization of work and reinvigorate hegemonic masculinit y and its domination over women and subaltern men.