Gendering Finance: Masculinities and Hierarchies at the Stockholm Stock Exchange

Based on survey data, interviews and observations, this paper examines the division of labour between men and women in stock-brokerage firms active on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Starting off with a simplistic view of internalized (sex) roles and normative order, according to which men are valued higher than women in the world of finance, the analysis gradually shifts towards a focus on reflexive actors and local interaction. The analysis ends up proposing that this specific gender regime is best interpreted as produced by situated face-to-face encounters between foremost male analysts and male brokers. These two categories of men have unstable and contradictory status relations to each other, which threaten the identity, community and status of the brokers. The encounters between male brokers and male analysts produce a rather sexist and female-discriminating discourse and at least two different versions of masculinity.