The purpose of this essay is to provide an insight into the role of women in male dominated workplaces who sell recreational and other vehicles, and why there is so few women working in this area even though there are a lot of women using these kinds of vehicles. I have chosen cultural analytics as my staring point because it gives me the tools to problematize and put a light on the phenomena of women in male dominated workplaces and what can be done to further increase diversity within these workplaces. As I will show the male dominated workplace is not completely void of women, there is however a gender segregation meaning that there are very few women to be found in the sales and more labor-intensive department. Women who do work in these workplaces are found in more traditional female rolls, as in accounting and finance. The argument I put forth is that retailers have a lot to gain by including more woman in the front end of the business, not only because it is good for the brand to appear inclusive but also because there are a growing number of female users of recreational vehicles, some of whom prefer to interact with a female sales representative when visiting the showroom. The methods that I have used are observations and qualitative interviews. During field studies I observed several different showrooms to identify customers and get a sense of the number of women and men going in and out. My purpose has been to try to identify if there is a correlation between the idea of recreational as a masculine phenomenon and the gender of the actual customers going into a showroom. The other method has consisted of interviews where I interviewed female and male employees to gain insight into their view on female representation and why there are so few women working in sales and other frontend roles.My conclusion is that even though there is a general recognition that motors and vehicles traditionally is associated with masculinity it does not have to be the case in practice. Everyone I have talked to is open to the idea of more woman working in these roles, the challenge is not a lack of will but rather how to find more women who are willing to occupy roles traditionally occupied by men. There is also an awareness of the toxic masculinity that sometimes exists where women are diminished and marginalized and that diversity training within the organization is the answer to achieve a more inclusive working environment
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-210835 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Kjörling, Åsa |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0091 seconds