ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which women can 'act otherwise', breaking routines through their transformative capacity. It explores the lived experience of women in non-traditional forms of employment. The chapter examines harassment and discrimination in two areas of male-dominated employment, non-traditional manual employment and specific professions. Finally, the chapter considers the rationale of what is revealed to be a dichotomy between the treatment of women in manual non-traditional employment and those in male-dominated professions, where women have increased in number. First, unlike the situation in male-dominated professions, there is little possibility of an occupational division of labour along gender lines in non-traditional employment. Second, unlike in male-dominated professions, women become, of necessity, 'one of the boys', both in behaviour and appearance. Third, it has been suggested that because of changes in the workplace, and because of economic and political changes, it may be possible to look upon men in some forms of manual employment as experiencing a 'subordinated masculinity'.
