ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a project, where tiredness was the road sign the authors followed to understand the body, time and work in modernity, while gender was the frame of reference that helped them make sense of it all. This chapter makes a case out of how some middle-aged engineers and teachers talk about their tiredness to illustrate the interplay of gender, body and work. As middle-aged people in these professions, the men and women are positioned to be 'caught in the middle', which makes them of particular interest to us as witnesses of the contradictions within modernity. The chapter uses the way women and men talk of how they understand and handle tiredness that is, how they do their tiredness to discuss the doings of gender in modernity. When men start to embody women's work and life situations there is hope not only of talking and handling tiredness more collectively, but also of doing gender in a less strenuous way.
