Professionalizing and Masculinizing a Female Occupation: The Reconceptualization of Hospital Administration in the Early 1900s
研究了20世纪初医院管理这一女性主导职业如何通过男性主导的专业协会建立知识体系和教育要求，实现男性化转型，揭示了职业男性化的内部机制。
This paper examines the earliest boundary work for a female-dominated occupation that portrayed men rather than women as the appropriate practitioners. According to the concept of gender primacy, men would not enter a female-dominated occupation in large numbers because it is associated with gender essentialism. Hospital administration is one of the rare female occupations that did masculinize. Our analysis of archival texts on hospital administration in the early 1900s describes that in establishing a jurisdiction, body of knowledge, and educational requirements, the male-dominated professional association created a male sex boundary. Extracting and elaborating functions consistent with gender primacy and sloughing off functions associated with gender essentialism reframed the occupation as male. Rhetorical use of gender created a male image of the generic practitioner and the occupation, while an internal boundary segregated women within the occupation. The study points to differences in how occupations feminize and masculinize and suggests the latter does not occur solely in response to societal factors, as has been assumed, but can originate within the occupation.