Disruptive Masculinities? Male Workers Challenging Gender(ed) Norms in Technology Startup Organizations

Edyta Tobiasiewicz

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.21.2.02

Authors

Edyta Tobiasiewicz AGH University of Krakow https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6171-773X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.21.2.02

Keywords:

Masculinity, Startup Organizations, Tech Workplaces, Challenging Masculine Norms, Tech Industry

Abstract

The tech industry is one of the most influential and profitable sectors of the new economy, with startup organizations playing a significant role within it. Existing research highlights that these emerging companies remain male-dominated—structurally, normatively, and symbolically. However, researchers rarely consider how norms and gender inequalities, which privilege men and masculinities, might be questioned and negotiated by male employees, especially those in positions of privilege. This article examines how men occupying different roles in tech startups contest, transgress, or redefine dominant gender(ed) norms in their workplaces. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted between 2021 and 2023 with 43 male and female startup employees—as part of a broader study funded by the Polish National Science Centre (grant no. 2020/37/N/HS6/03913)—this analysis demonstrates how men engaging in emotional labor (on individual and collective levels), actively reconfigure the gender regime and “disrupt” the reproduction of normative models of masculinity within their companies.

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Author Biography

Edyta Tobiasiewicz, AGH University of Krakow

Edyta Tobiasiewicz is a Ph.D. student in the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University and an MA student in psychology. She is a research assistant in the project: “NEXUS: Twinning Research and Innovation Institutions to Design and Implement Inclusive GEPs” and an academic teacher at the Faculty of Humanity at the AGH University of Krakow. She is a project coordinator (“Innovative Professional Organizations: Gender and Technology Startups,” financed by the National Science Center in Poland [Preludium 19 competition]). Her scientific interests revolve around gender patterns and gender inequalities, tech organizations, gendered innovations, and social innovations.

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