Through an analysis of two highly routinized interactive service jobs, fast food service and insurance sales, this article explores the interrelationship of work, gender, and identity. While notions of proper gender behavior are quite flexible, gender-segregated service jobs reinforce the conception of gender differences as natural. The illusion that gender-typed interaction is an expression of workers' inherent natures is sustained, even in situations in which workers' appearances, attitudes, and demeanors are closely controlled by their employers. Gender-typed work has different meanings (...) for women and men, however, because of differences in the cultural valuation of behavior considered appropriate to each gender. (shrink)

Work organizations construct gender relations by two mechanisms. First, they allocate men and women to different positions. Instead of the traditional pattern of firm-specific segregation of waiters and waitresses, quantitative data show that most restaurants in this study have integrated wait staffs. Second, work organizations define job performances in gender terms. Qualitative data from five illustrative restaurants show that male and female servers in integrated staffs “do gender” by performing gendered service styles. Even when men and women are coservers, job (...) titles and dress codes suggest that providing service in a fine dining restaurant is waitering, whereas serving in a coffee shop is waitressing. Focusing on gendered styles of services expands our definition of gender and has serious implications for efforts to achieve occupational integration. (shrink)