This study looks at two Swedish image databases of vastly different scale and how they have decided to apply metadata in relation to gender. The databases in question are Kringla, which is a massive database containing more than 2 million photographs from all over Sweden. The second database is Stockholms digitala stadsmusuem’s (Stockholm’s digital museum) database and it is much smaller and contains mostly images from, and around, the city of Stockholm. As a theoretical base I have used Yvonne Hirdman’s theory of men as a social norm (man-lighetsnorm) and applied it on the type of metadata that was applied to images containing men and women. The study also contains a quantitative element where I documented the amount of hits certain gendered, and non-gendered, search terms generated and then discussed them through a Terry Cook and Joan Schwartz inspired lens of power dynamics and archives.