Abstract
Working-class masculinities have traditionally been studied as rooted in industrial labor, physical strength, and skilled manual work, sources of social value for subordinate men. But what becomes of these gender performances in the context of declining manual labor and the tertiarization of the economy? Based on an ethnographic study of French low-cost hardware stores, this article examines how salesmen - members of the working class - reappropriate historical forms of masculinity while adapting them to the constraints of service-sector employment. The analysis begins by highlighting the central role of the low-cost business model, whose highly gendered organization shapes both management strategies and workers’ behaviors. Performance and endurance are framed as masculine traits, contributing to the overmasculinization of the workforce. A first style of masculinity, preferred by management, centers on “hard graft” i.e., demonstrating physical endurance by taking on handling tasks and avoiding customer interaction. A second style, more resistant to the organization’s logic, values expertise and technical knowledge, expressed through interactions with customers and evoking the figure of the craftsman. Occupying a low-skilled position, salesmen try to recreate informal skills to enoble their activity. In sum, I argue that work continues to be a powerful site for the production of gender and masculinities, despite its profound recent transformations. Masculinities must therefore be understood at the intersection of organizations, work, and individuals, and as embedded in broader social relations.
Respectability has long been a central concern for the working classes: throughout the centuries of industrial capitalism and deep class subordination, they have sought to construct legitimacy, particularly through gendered practices within labor (Oeser 2022; Pigenet 2002; Skeggs 2002; Thompson 2013; Willis 2017). Working-class masculinities have been built on values as strength, courage, mastery, skills, camaraderie performed through industrial labor, providing men with hard but stable jobs, reinforcing their breadwinning ability and the sexual division of labor with women (Bradley 1989; Daune-Richard 2001). Nevertheless, deindustrialization and the shift toward a service-based economy have disrupted the job market now dominated by abstract, interactive, low-skilled and unstable jobs. The professional resources for constructing respectable masculinities are weakened in the new economy, where different competences, as interactional skills and the ability to please customers, are valued (McDowell 2000; Nayak 2006; Nixon 2006, 2009, 2017).
Nevertheless, men do enter low-skilled service jobs. What kind of masculinities are enacted within these professional contexts? This article takes us inside low-cost hardware stores in France, within a retail chain called Bricostock, 1 which is largely dominated by men. While the sector has, on average, achieved gender parity with 48 percent of saleswomen in the furniture, home goods and hardware stores in France (data from the DARES, the statistical office of the Ministry of Labour), Bricostock has a lower rate of feminization with only 20,2 percent of saleswomen according to a company-level agreement on gender equality (2024). How can we explain such an over-masculinization of the workforce? How does it affect professional practices? And how do men adapt to the service tasks, that may appear incompatible with traditional masculinity?
In this article, I argue that work is still a powerful source of masculinities, despite the socio-economic upheavals that call into question older frameworks. I then propose to enrich Raewynn Connell’s perspective (2005) in order to give to work the importance it always had for gender constructions: masculinities are intertwined configurations of practices structured by gender, class and work relations, which are inseparable. The first part will highlight the major impact of firms and business strategies on the construction of the masculine domination, expressed both numerically and symbolically at Bricostock’s. Providing the organization with a unique model of masculinity, Bricostock stores appear in fact to be the place for a pluraIity of masculinities. The second part of the article will describe the masculinities of strength, based on the bodily engagement in physical labor and the avoidance of interactions, which can be seen as a variation of the old graft masculinity. The third part will then explore the expert masculinities, based on informal technical skills which are valued in the service interaction, recalling this time the traditional craftsman style of masculinity.
Literature Review
This article extends several fields of literature. It first builds on the theory of gendered organizations, illustrating how firms shape gender performances. It also contributes to research on the formation of working-class masculinities and the role of labor in this process. It also revisits the literature on service work, examining how men adapt to occupations traditionally associated with femininity. Finally, low-cost hardware stores offer a relevant field for analyzing marginalized forms of masculinity.
The Major Role of Organizations in the (Re)production of Inequalities
Joan Acker developed the “theory of gendered organizations” (1990), underlining the active participation of organizations in the formation of gender inequalities regimes, insufficiently taken into account in the current analysis. Indeed, the idea of bureaucracy as neutral, one of the most classic reflection on organisations (Weber 2019), obscurs their central role in the making of gender and social relations. Organizations produce policies that generates social inequalities, such as sex-based divisions of labor, disparities in status and wages, gender representations, promotion of femininity and masculinity models. This theoretical framework has been discussed by scholars, as Dana M. Britton (2000), who underlined its abstraction. She incites us to examine the ways an organization is concretely gendered - masculinized or feminized - and how it influences the interactions and behaviors of the individuals. Sarah Fenstermaker and Candace West (2002) make a similar argument when they call for an investigation of the interactions between the different levels of the social reality, rather than isolate the organizational one. In this perspective, Haude Rivoal (2021) proposes to reverse this perspective, showing how men and masculinities are actively preferred and favored in some organizations rather than just how women are excluded, taking the example of warehouse masculinities in France. This process is, indeed, a major obstacle to the feminization of organizations and has to be examined in the case of Bricostock.
My research brings together these different overviews about inequalities and organizations, showing how gender structures the organizations, and how they influence in return gender expressions. Starting from its marketing and business strategies, which are explicitly gendered, I highlight how companies can favor men and certain forms of masculinity. The organizational level plays as a frame for managers and workers, that shapes their behaviors and interactions in the workplace, especially their gender performances. The organization’s brand image in the market is gendered, the “hypothetical worker” (Acker 1990, 149) is masculine and the workforce is consequently over-masculinized.
Masculinities at work emerge from the interaction between organizations and workers. Who are then the salesmen at Bricostock? They are part of the working class, a group whose gendered performances have been examined in the sociological literature.
Working-Class Masculinities: Tradition and Disruption
Working-class masculinities have been identified for a long time in the literature as centered on work, which provides men with social value in many ways. Skilled and unskilled work draws an historical distinction among the group and, by extension, through the expressions of the masculine gender (Coutant et al. 2015; Nayak, 2003; Nixon 2009). One traditional masculine figure is the craftsman, part of an aristocracy of labour: specialized in a field through apprenticeship with more experienced workers, he uses his expertise and technical knowledge in the service of a demanding and sometimes meticulous production process (Sennett 2008). Furthermore, scholars also noted the importance of physical performances, that working-class men express through hard graft, becoming part of their social identities. Graft is about “hard working”, in other terms, demonstrating strength, endurance, and determination through intense involvement in physically demanding work (Schwartz 2009; Willis 2017).
In this context, work becomes the masterpiece of a “moral economy” (Thompson 2013), a source of “respectability” (Skeggs 2002) and a main access to “masculine nobility” (Bourdieu 2001). Long-life labour guaranteed the breadwinning ability of the workers, key component of the gendered division of labor with women and the masculine dominance within it (Bradley 1989). Constructed in contrast to femininity, working-class masculinities also emerge from a class-based construction: they seek to distinguish themselves from the masculinities of the upper classes, which are perceived as more intellectual and weak, a “diminished masculinity” (Oeser 2022, 69). Working-class masculinities risk thus to be trapped in stereotypical and homogeneous representations, according to the “social fantasy of the working-class violence” (Rasera and Renahy 2013, 170). In these dominant narratives, working-class men are delegitimized as they are accused of performing the wrong type of masculinity, supposedly centered around brutality and domination. These allows middle and upper-class men to distinguish from working-class men - process which is part of the establishment of the hegemonic masculinity (Bridges and Pascoe 2014; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Messner 1994).
Masculinities constitute then a key vector of social differentiation, notably responsive to economic and productive changes. Working-class jobs are indeed intensively destabilized by the deindustrialization and the expansion of the service sector (Nixon 2006; Seiller 2023; Ward 2019). Service jobs require to engage in frequent interactions with customers and deliver emotional labor, in a relation which is moreover structurally unequal. Indeed, customers are most of the time positioned as “sovereign” by the organizations and workers have to submit to their desires (Du Gay and Salaman 1992; Hochschild 2003; Nixon 2009). In these jobs, women tend to be the majority, due to the deferential postures they imply in order to please the customers, which would be more congruent with femininity and repellent for men (Monchatre 2010; Nixon 2009). Moreover, service jobs are, in part, low-skilled and precarious, and do not provide people with stable positions: the ongoing need to adapt work organization to shifts in clientele demands that workers be flexible, work under short-term contracts, and take on part-time hours. For all these reasons, “there is a clear mismatch between the kinds of jobs that the men seek to enter and those that are being generated by the service economy”, argues Darren Nixon (2006, 202).
Working-class masculinities, particularly when unskilled, appear to be no longer needed in the new economy: they are “redundant” (McDowell 2003) and shifting toward other sites, as “displaced” masculinities (Nayak 2006). In this sense, gym culture reflects both graft and craft traits, along with forms of male camaraderie (Gibbs et al. 2022), while boxing fosters respectable forms of masculinity (Oualhaci 2022; Wacquant 2006).
In constrat with this litterature, this article will show that work is still a source of gender, especially for men; masculinities are not just shifting toward other social spheres. In this perspective, we will explore how the classic elements of the working-class masculinities are being challenged nowadays, but also in what conditions they remain, specifically in a service job. Indeed, interactive work does not inherently invalidate traditional masculinities, and working class men can mobilize it as a resource for the construction of a gendered respectability.
Men in Service Jobs: Reproduction or Change?
Indeed, men do enter service jobs, where they find ways to maintain their masculinities and positions of power. Sectors such as finance or business consulting are dominated by upper and middle-class men, and are highly constructed as masculine (Boni-Legoff 2013). Men tend usually to engage in “masculine service niches” (Nixon 2009, 317) where work is aligned with masculinities. In these sectors, as the police (Pruvost 2007), no servitude, deference or emotional labor is required with the customers and workers can get control and authority on them. The sale of technical or expensive products, with a tradition of commission-based pay, has for instance long been a male stronghold, where relational skills have been recoded as masculine, incorporating aggressiveness, client pressure and competition (Lawson 2000; Leidner 1991; Wharton 2002). Men can also invest in service jobs where interactions value them, given the upscale clientele and the luxurious nature of the services provided (Barbier 2019; Beaumont 2019), or the proximity with cultural capital (Chabault 2009). Even in feminine-associated service jobs (Lupton 2000; Simpson 2005), men continue to benefit from a positional advantage, through a phenomenon of “glass escalator” (Williams 1992; Wingfield and Myles 2014), which provides them with positions of power and faster career advancement than women. The category of service jobs is then highly hierarchical: it both reflects and reinforces social and gender inequalities.
In this context, working-class men are not absent from this sector: they are relegated to low-skilled service jobs, as employees in fast foods (Mao and Xue 2022), retail (Roberts 2013), or logistics (Rivoal 2021). But they are not just rejecting these positions, as the working-class men in Daren Nixon’s studies (2006, 2009). As Michael R. M. Ward (2019) suggested it, service interactions lead to new negotiations with masculinity. According to Olivier Schwartz (2011), service jobs now represent a significant employment opportunity for the working-class, who acquire “diversified interactional habits” through these new experiences. Even if low-skilled, employees reappropriate these roles, finding ways to value their position (Mao and Xue 2022; Rivoal 2021; Roberts 2013). Moreover, the general rise in educational attainment also impacts-working-class young men and nourishes a plurality of masculinities: studies show diversified attitudes, between rejection of school (‘Lads’), investment and hopes for social mobility (‘Swots’) and a minimal use to improve their integration into the labor market (‘Ordinary kids’) (Brozsely and Nixon 2022). These broad socio-economic transformations have an impact on gender identities and bring “a changing picture of masculinity” (Roberts 2013, 682), with for instance workers valuing the interactions with customers and defending egalitarian visions of domestic labour.
In this context, have traditional forms of masculinity completely vanished with the tertiarization of the economy and the decline of manual labor? On the contrary, physical and industrial constraints are even more present: in France, the proportion of employees required to carry or move heavy loads rose from 21.5 percent in 1984 to 40.5 percent in 2019 (Algava and Nass 2023). There are still working-class and physically demanding jobs, such as those in the Saint-Nazaire shipyards: they still nourish strong masculine cultures (Seiller 2023). But what these data also suggest is that some service-sector jobs combine both industrial and commercial constraints within the new economy. This points to the emergence of a service-sector working class, where men are also present. How does it shape masculinities? This is one of the questions explored in this article.
Marginalized Masculinities in Search of Legitimacy
Salesmen in low cost hardware stores are emblematic of this new social service-sector working-class. They work in an ambivalent “masculine service niche” (Nixon 2009). Constructed as masculine, it implies constant interactions with the customers and offers low-skilled subordinate positions. Salesmen have no official “mandate” (Hughes 1963), as a recognized qualification, that could give them automatic legitimacy in the service interaction. Their skills are devalued and invisible, much like domestic cleaners or home care workers (Avril, 2014). They therefore experience a strong subordination both to customers and to their hierarchy.
Nonetheless, salesmen in low cost hardware stores have more resources than unskilled women to counter domination. With experience, salesmen in low cost hardware stores can progressively acquire informal technical knowledge, which protects them in front of customers. It allows them to gain authority and enjoy a certain degree of independence from the hierarchy. However, these resources remain precarious and unequally distributed. By contrast, in conventional stores, work has historically been organized around providing customer advice, with products requiring a high level of technical expertise (Tiffon 2013). Employees are called “sales advisor” and their work was long primarily focused on customer advice, before polyvalence was introduced under the influence of the low-cost model.
Quoted participants demographics
Then, what is their place in the hierarchy of masculinities? Raewynn Connell (2005) identified four forms of masculinity in her famous typology. Its starting point is the hegemonic masculinity, a collectively recognized male ideal, that dominates women and other men. Next comes the complicit masculinity: men in this category aspire to dominance, seek to conform to the hegemonic norm, and benefit from it. There is then the subordinated masculinity, which concerns men collectively recognized as illegitimate, such as homosexuals, since hegemony is built on the principle of heterosexuality. Finally, the marginalized masculinity includes men at the lower end of the hierarchy, who may dominate within their own social group but remain largely excluded from hegemony and positions of power at the global level. Considering their social and professional profile described earlier, low cost hardware salesmen are close to the marginalized masculinity, with limited resources to build the hegemony, due to class deprivation and the lack of qualifications (Connell 1991). In their search for legitimacy and respectability, they aim to reassert dominance locally, notably over women, but also, at times, over other men, as we will see with the customers.
Data
The article is based on a wider study which explores the consequences of low-cost strategies on work and workers. Low-cost is a business model focused on minimizing expenses in order to maximize profits. It is based on cost reduction in all aspects of the organizations, aiming to offer the lowest prices across various sectors. This article focuses on the low-cost retail sector, which is characterized by smaller stores with limited product ranges and choices, simple decor, and minimal services. Cost reduction also significantly impacts work and employment practices: low-cost organizations operate with reduced and multi-skilled staffss so as to minimize labor costs. They also rely on more precarious forms of employment, such as part-time and temporary work, and hire from the most vulnerable segments of the working class, intersecting with various inequalities like class, gender, race, and age (Gardes, 2019).
I conducted an ethnographic study, with a total of 7 months of participant observation: I worked as a sales intern in two stores of a hardware chain anonymized as Bricostock, one of the most important low cost firm in the sector. The selection of stores was intended to reflect geographical diversity between the Paris region and the provinces: the first, where I stayed for 4 months, is located in the suburbs of Paris (referred to as warehouse no. 1 in the text), and the other in a medium-sized city in Northern France, with 3 months of presence (warehouse no. 2). The material was collected through a field journal to note my observations, redrafted everyday at home.
According to the principle of reflexivity in ethnography (Beaud and Weber 2010), the examination of my positionality and interactions allowed for a full exploration of masculinities, that are defined in relation to the femininity. My relationship with the workers was embedded in gender, class and race relations, as I was seen as a white female student, affectionately called “the young girl”. The salesmen’s reactions and expectations toward me, as well as the tasks I was assigned, are used as material, occasionally drawn upon in this article.
I conducted a total of 61 in-depth interviews across various employee categories, including salespersons, cashiers, department and cashier supervisors, and managers. The interviews focused on individuals’ experiences of work as well as their life trajectories. The qualitative data were analyzed through a meticulous reading, which allowed the identification of the central themes of the study. All locations and names have been anonymized to protect the participants.
No data are available on the gender of Bricostock’s clientele, but other indicators can help us approach the phenomenon. According to internal documents (2009), 41 percent of customers are professionals or semi-professionals, while 59 percent are private individuals. Building and craft professionals are predominantly male, with feminization rates below 6 percent in these professions in France, according to the DARES, the statistical office of the Ministry of Labour.
Findings
Gender and Masculinities as an Organizational Process
According to Acker’s perspective (1990), the masculinization of Bricostock’s workforce has to be analyzed at the organizational level. Indeed, the company’s marketing strategies, its economic positioning, its culture, as well as its management are designed in a masculine way, thereby encouraging a predominance of men.
A key element of the organization that warrants examination is the brand and the company culture, which are deeply embedded in gender representations. Since its creation, the store chain has been conceived as masculine and still conveys this image in the marketplace. Bricostock has been launched in the 1990s by Décomarché, an historical and popular hardware chain of stores, funded in the 1960s when the retail sector expanded in France (Daumas 2020). Facing the impacts of the Gulf crisis, as well as the market saturation, the top-management of Décomarché decided to “create a new profitable position to enable the [Décomarché] group to increase its market share and profits” (internal document “Décomarché Trophies”, 1994). From the beginning, Décomarché and Bricostock are thus conceived as distinct concepts, which remained with their later acquisition by the European financial group, Homea. In internal documents (see Illustration 1 and 2), the group clearly distinguishes its two brands in slides divided in two parts, each featuring different types of products aimed at different customer segments. Décomarché, the historical chain store, represents “the house to live”, targeting “the individuals and the feminine axis”. Their stores are turned to “home arrangement” and “gardening”, associated to the words of “ornamental”, “beautiful”, “ephemeral” explicitly linked with femininity. On the other side, Bricostock depicts “the house to build” and caters to “serious handymen and tradespeople”. The themes used to represent the brand, such as “construction” “renovation” “durability” and “solidity” refer to the external world and evoke attributes socially associated with masculinity. At the highest levels of the company, Bricostock thus projects a masculine image, characterized by its distinct products, clientele, and values, and differentiated from femininity, which is represented by the other company, Décomarché. Slide 14 from the “presentation for investors”, Homea Group, 2009. Slide 19 from the “presentation for investors”, Homea Group, 2009.
The organizational framing of gender and masculinities is reflected in management: it shapes how the business model is implemented in the stores and how work is organized. Modern retail has traditionally operated on a self-service model, where customers play an active role in their shopping experience. This model is taken to an extreme in the low-cost stores, particularly in the hardware retail. Indeed, conventional hardware stores have been historically centered on service and advice to customers, due to the technical nature of the products. Unlike large conventional stores, low-cost stores are smaller and offer a narrower product range. They emphasize high product availability and have a rapid stock turnover, leading to frequent and brisk handling activities.
Since the low-cost business model reduces the level of service, store managers emphasize that employees should not spend too much time with clients, as Chris, a 40-year-old manager, told me at warehouse no. 1 in a work interaction (during a conversation about my internship): “Our job isn’t to assist the customer through their project. (…) Low-cost means that too: I’ll point you in the right direction, but I’m not getting involved in your whole thing.” Salesmen are expected to guide customers through the store, but not to provide assistance in how to use the products. Employees are thus ordered to focus on restocking shelves rather than providing customer service.
Consequently, physical strength is valued by managers far more than technical knowledge or relational skills. Endurance is perceived by managers as a masculine trait, which guides the recruitment process: “For the plumbing department, I need a guy”, told me once the same Chris, while he was looking for a new salesman. Bricostock’s managers daily face the challenge of working with a reduced staff for a significant amount of physical workload. They sometimes express a clear preference for men, that reinforces their predominance.
Men are thus employed in large numbers, while women, when present, perform different tasks. Bricostock stores are organized according to a gendered division of labor, which is explicitly described by William, a 47-year-old manager at warehouse no. 2. “As I was saying, Hugo [salesman], his strength is sales, assembling furniture [for the showrooms], so we use that. Laurent [salesman], well today, Laurent’s strength is management, so he assists me in management. [...] And you take Élodie [saleswoman], well there, Élodie... I believe her strength is always her good mood. A girl... no, but a girl in a team, I’ve had them in the decoration department, in the electrical department, in plumbing, I’ve had them too... it’s a strength. Because when a girl arrives in a good mood, it immediately sets a tone... it lightens the atmosphere a bit. [...] I’ll take Hugo, his weakness is product identification, price checking and all that, so Élodie compensates for that... those things. Élodie’s weakness is handling; she’s a girl, there’s weight on the shelves, there are things, you know... Well Bruno [salesman] compensates for those things. You see, you always need a bit of... it’s like communicating vessels, really”
Men are typically assigned to tasks such as shelf stocking, furniture assembly, and stock management, which are considered physical and technical. In contrast, women are mostly given roles in cleaning, price checking, minor handling tasks, and providing a sense of cheerfulness. They are also involved in decorative tasks and are expected to make use of their ‘charms’ with customers (mostly men), as the director of Warehouse No. 1 once told me during a promotional flyer delivery in the store. This division of labor reflects the traditional notion of “feminine fragility” (according to the expression of Mohammed, a 33-year-old manager at warehouse no. 1) and relegates women to less valued tasks, which are not seen as critical to maintaining well-stocked shelves.
At the level of the company’s brand as well as in the work organization, the distinction between men and women recalls the famous drawing of the gendered-based symbolic oppositions proposed by Pierre Bourdieu (2001): based on his observations of the Algerian society during the 1960s, he showed that each gender is associated to different sets of values, rigorously opposed (for instance: “Weak” vs “Strong”, “Inside” vs “Outside”). Homea’s gender-based distinction between Bricostock and Décomarché demonstrates the persistence of these longstanding symbolic divisions and the forms they take in the economic sphere. This represents a fundamental aspect of how organizations frame gender and masculinities, illustrating that the market, treated as an economic abstraction, is not neutral. Rather, it is embedded in social constructs (Polanyi 2024), particularly in gender relations and representations.
These oppositions are reflected in the division of labor implemented by managers. They do not just allocate different activities between men and women; they also embed definitions of masculinity and femininity into the organizational structure. It reinforces in return differentiated conceptions of workers. The pressure of costs reduction leads to staff cuts and a focus on handling tasks, which creates a recruitment bias favoring men, based on the naturalization of feminine and masculine skills. Business models - as low-cost strategies - influence thus the spread of gender representations that are among the most stereotypical and essentialist.
How do employees respond to these homogeneous projections? The ethnography reveals two different ways of performing masculinities. First, I will depict the masculinities of strength, based on physical exertion and the avoidance of interactive service work, mostly performed by young and inexperienced salesmen. I will then describe the expert masculinities, build on technical knowledge and seniority.
Masculinities of Strength: The Avoidance of the Interactive Service Work
One approach to customers involves minimizing interactions: service work is devalued by the workers. Pablo, a 33-year-old temporary salesman at warehouse no. 1, describes how he “hides from customers”, by using various strategies, such as working in the side aisles, which are less crowded than the main aisle that starts at the entrance. “I prefer working in the morning because there are no customers,” he tells me during a work interaction (2015). During morning shifts (6 a.m.–1 p.m.), customer interactions are limited, since the store is mostly frequented by tradespeople known for their product knowledge and who do not need assistance. These employees do not professionally identify with the sales role. “I’m a temp worker,” says Gabriel, a 46-year-old salesman at warehouse no. 2, when a customer approaches him. He redirects him to what he calls “a sales adviser” (field journal, 2016). “I’m a warehouse picker,” says Cédric, a 25-year-old temporary salesman at warehouse no. 1 (field journal, 2015) when he introduces himself to me, indicating that he does not identify professionally as a salesman. In an interview, Cédric specifies what he thinks of service interactions: Cédric: Actually, at first, when I started [at Bricostock], I didn’t like it at all. I even thought... after ten days, I even thought about quitting. (...) Cyrine: What didn’t you like at the beginning? Cédric: The people. Communicating with people. I like communicating with colleagues but not with customers. I’m too... yeah... my first job was in a fast food, so dealing with people... And then I moved to delivery, where I was alone all day in my truck, had my route sheet, no boss over me, nobody. I was perfectly fine in my own space. And then, well, going from that peace for two years to... sales, it’s very different, let’s say.
Cédric does not value service interactions, linking this discomfort to his previous professional experiences in roles involving limited contact with the public. Avoidance of customers is generally observed among salesmen who have not been socialized into interaction-based occupations: Pablo, quoted above, studied mechanics and construction and primarily worked in warehouses and on construction sites, while Gabriel holds a baccalaureate in construction, where he spent most of his career before joining Bricostock. These profiles extend the idea that there is a misalignment between the habitus of working-class men and service jobs (Nixon 2009). Interactions are perceived as potentially degrading because of the deference they require, as well as the risk of losing face due to a lack of experience and technical knowledge. Unlike traditional hardware stores, Bricostock provides no product training. Interestingly, it is the emotion of fear that governs this avoidance behavior, in response to the emotional labor demanded by service interactions.
In this context, handling tasks play a crucial role: they provide a refuge from risky interactions and directly shape masculinities of strength. “I handle heavy products,” says the same Cédric (interview, 2015), describing the division of labor in his department, while his colleague Jeannie, a 50-year-old saleswoman, prefers cleaning because “the boys” only think about “heavy stuff” (field journal, 2015). These employees “tackle the pallets”, according to a local expression, meaning their bodies are constantly active, stocking shelves throughout the day, among customers, and under the watchful eyes of managers who oversee operations from the central aisle. When salesmen are not engaged in physical work, their tasks seem futile: “I don’t like pricing, I feel useless. I prefer handling; I have two or three empty places on my shelves...” says Stéphane, a 29-year-old salesman at warehouse no. 1, as we argue over incorrect price posters that I made because he didn’t want to make them (field journal, 2015). Our dispute is indicative of the rejection of tasks associated with femininity, such as making price posters, which are considered easy or superficial. In contrast, stocking the shelves is considered a more important task: it allows the expression of physical performance and endurance, which are central to the construction of masculinities. Handling is an area in which salesmen feel competent and where they perceive the greatest opportunity to gain recognition.
Engaging in physical labor and withdrawing from service relations constitutes a way of reclaiming honor through work. Indeed, it is very common to hear these salesmen repeat that they are “hard workers” (Paul, a 50-year-old salesman, warehouse no. 1) when they face difficult tasks, particularly in front of a woman. “A real man doesn’t do nothing, he works!” says Maxime, a 21-year-old temporary salesman, when I ask him why he is returning to work earlier than expected during our lunch break (warehouse no. 1, field journal, 2015). The masculine gender is here explicitly associated with hard commitments to work, but also to the fact that they have a real job.
Indeed, the traits of the masculinity of strength are widely shared among employees, but particularly present among the younger ones, who have recently joined the company, sometimes still in precarious positions. Bricostock usually recruits new employees on a temporary basis, aiming both to gain flexibility and to test candidates for permanent positions. Moreover, these salesmen have the experience of “pin-ball” trajectories” and “yo-yo” youth transitions (Brozsely and Nixon 2022), that is, highly unstable professional and social life courses, marked by a succession of short-term contracts interspersed with periods of unemployment, and sometimes a dependance on welfare benefits. Kept away from stable employment and maintained in precarious positions, these salesmen make respectability, in the sense described by Skeggs (2002), a major concern. Demonstrating physical performance and commitment to work serves then to reassert masculine positions marginalized by employment insecurity.
Masculinities of strength reflect a rejection of interactive service work, which is associated with femininity and were not part of these salesmen’s socialization. But they also highlight the importance for working-class men of identifying with an active worker figure, demonstrated through breadwinning ability, sustaining both the sexual division of labor with women and masculine identities. These intense commitments to work are a modern illustration of ancient grafting masculinities, where an individual’s value is measured by the effort invested at work, especially for men. They are at the same time in line with managerial demands and the requirements of the low-cost business model. Therefore, the company benefits from the social quests for valorization among working-class men, particularly those who are most vulnerable: it exploits their endurance, a key element of the masculine honor, for productivity purposes. Paradoxically, it also reflects an attitude of docility toward the company, reinforced by their precarious status, which compels them to conform.
Nevertheless, it is noticeable that some salesmen, like Cédric, stay in this job even if they had initial apprehensions. Therefore, I would be more nuanced than Nixon’s statement (2009), suggesting that there is a gradual socialization into service interactions: salesmen learn on the job how to adjust their masculinities to the demands of service work.
Expert and Technical Masculinities: Knowledge as a Professional Value
Other salesmen do not shy away from interacting with customers; instead, they engage under specific conditions. Interactions can be positively invested in by employees if they have control over them, particularly by mitigating or eliminating the risk of moral and social degradation it may bring.
These service interactions paradoxically become a venue for establishing a position of power, rooted in customers’ technical dependence on the salesmen. When they interact, salesmen do not always use the traditional signs of deference or common politeness that typically indicate customer superiority; similarly, outward displays of care or dedication are absent. Here is one interaction I could observe at warehouse no. 2: Field Journal - Warehouse No. 2 (2016): In the central aisle, a salesman from the wood department calls out to his colleague from hardware, because a woman is waiting for an advice: “Are you busy or not? Because if you’re busy, I’ll tell her you’re busy!”. Facing no response from him, he insists, joking: “Can you come to work or not?”. The customer does not laugh. Suddenly, the salesman, Simon, 35, comes out, approaching calmly, looking a bit displeased; he has been interrupted in handling activities. “Simon: What’s this for, Madame? Customer: It’s for screw anchors... Simon: Yes, but what are you going to use them for? To assemble furniture? Customer (hesitant): Yes... Simon: And on what type of wall? Hollow? Solid? Customer: I don’t know... Simon: You need to know, otherwise I might make a mistake...” He then multiplies technical terms and the customer loses patience. She walks away decisively, saying she will find more information but is not at all satisfied with the service. She sarcastically wishes Simon a “nice day!” to which he responds in an equivalent tone, “You too, Madame!” He then turns to me, giving me a disenchanted and complicit look, accompanied by that raised eyebrow so common when salesmen have dealt with a customer considered as “difficult.”
In these interactions, salesmen provide technical explanations, using jargon that customers may not fully understand. They inquire about the situations presented to them and may reprimand customers for lacking information (“you need to know”). Their advice is frequently given as commands (“do it this way”) and is attentively listened by the customers, particularly in these working-class suburban areas where people prefer DIY projects over paying professionals for repairs. Expertise is wielded to create a distance from the customers, who are largely viewed as inexperienced. As a result, these interactions can become contentious, with customers sometimes feeling “poorly served,” as illustrated by this example. The gap between salesmen and client becomes even more pronounced in this case: the customer is a woman and she appears to be lacking of technical knowledge as well as claiming for a better service from Simon. In return, he keeps her at a distance, expressing power and expertise, recalling that masculinities are articulated in opposition to the feminine.
Nevertheless, these salesmen are far from believing that they treat customers poorly and can even feel humiliated when their sense of service is not acknowledged, as in this case. On the contrary, they identify as specialized and professional salesmen, who perfectly know the products and have an expertise to offer. Thierry, a 53-years-old salesman and small DIY supplies department manager at warehouse no. 1, highlights the importance of technical specialization to criticize the policy of versatility that requires salespeople to frequently switch departments and, consequently, products: “I saw a bit of the other departments and I didn’t like it, the product doesn’t appeal to me, you see what I mean? The advantage of small DIY supplies is that... I don’t like the unknown, if you want. So when they throw me onto a another department, if it’s to tell customers ‘well, I don’t know, I’m not interested’... Here, the advantage, before the guy asks me the question, I know what he’s going to ask me so I already have the answer. And I have been so many times, as a salesperson, when asked questions, standing there looking like an idiot, if you want… People say to you, “What are you doing here?” I’ve been told that so many times: “What are you doing here?”” (Interview)
This excerpt illustrates how service interactions can be particularly degrading for workers, carrying the risk of “looking like an idiot”, i.e., losing face if the salesmen lack the expertise to respond to the customer. This is precisely what young salesmen, who are performing a masculinity of strength, seek to avoid. Yet, interactions can also be an important source of pride and satisfaction, as noted by Guy, a 52-year-old salesman at warehouse no. 2 when I ask in an interview what he enjoys about his job. “I like customer contact, I like when... for example, when you recommend a product and the client buys it. Oh, that... You tell yourself that you haven’t worked in vain.”
These salesmen place high importance on customer service, viewing it as a crucial source of professional recognition that drives their engagement in work. Maintaining a distance from customers is a hallmark of professionalism, a way to demonstrate their professional worth and defend the quality of technical expertise.
Among these salesmen, most have the longest tenure, sometimes spanning up to 30 years, which is quite unusual, the company’s average tenure being 6 years and 7 months (internal document, 2016). The two Bricostock stores studied were previously Décomarché stores, part of the same Homea group. Homea’s strategy has been to convert underperforming Décomarché stores into Bricostock stores, as the low-cost business model is more profitable and less expensive. Consequently, some Bricostock stores employ salesmen with extensive technical and commercial expertise, gained over many years, through Décomarché's training programs, which emphasizes the quality of advice more than the low-cost model does. Socialized in a different context, the salesmen strongly identify with the service aspect of their previous roles at Décomarché. They strive to uphold their past professional values by advising customers, even though these skills are less appreciated at Bricostock. Respectability, a key component of working-class masculinities, can therefore stem from the service interactions, that salesmen seek to control by mobilizing their expertise.
This finding aligns with the valorization of interactions observed among retail workers (Roberts 2013). However, in this context, salesmen primarily deploy a register of distance from clients. This strategy can be understood as a distinction between laypeople and experts, creating an interactional setting that both reinforces their professional role and mitigates the perception of “dirty work” (Hughes, 1951). Expert masculinities are a modern variation of the old crafting masculinities based on the skilled and meticulous work of the craftsman. Here, technical expertise functions as an informal form of cultural capital (Bernard 2012), an unofficial qualification historically valued within the working class and continually reproduced by salesmen through professional and personal experiences outside formal training or company recognition. This expertise is fundamentally gendered, representing a variation of the relationship between masculinity and technology, as highlighted in the work of Cynthia Cockburn (2009).
The gender performances are also forms of “protest masculinities” (Connell 2005, 109) toward organizational rules: the salesmen provide advice to customers and gain gratification from doing so, even though that is not meant to be the core of their role. As Chris, a manager at warehouse no. 1, noted earlier, employees are not supposed to place value on service work; when they do so, it constitutes a form of resistance.
Service work can thus become the site for power, authority, and control, as in other masculine niches invested in by men (Nixon 2009). However, these positions are not given; salesmen must negotiate and defend them in every interaction with both clients and the hierarchy. It should be noted that the expression of domination in interactions does not preclude the performance of emotional labor. The numerous questions asked (as Simon does) do not just serve to irritate the customer; they signal the salesmen’s engagement with the customer’s issue, as they seek to identify the most suitable solution. Thierry, quoted above, even claims to be able to anticipate customers’ questions, which reflects not only expertise but also a deep understanding of the client’s needs, as shown for the female real estate agents (Wharton 2002) or car dealers (Lawson 2000).
Nevertheless, the distance in interactions is also tied to divisions and hierarchies within masculinities. Salesmen deploy their technical expertise to differentiate themselves from others - the customers -, who are categorized along multiple dimensions. The principle of distinction based on social class (Bourdieu 2015) plays here, with customers depicted by salesmen as “losers”, “helpless individuals”, generally perceived as “poor”. They are also categorized according to gender, as we saw in the earlier example, but also according to race, called “Black”, “Arab”, “Paki”, “Chinese” in function of what salesmen perceive from them. Salespeople are usually mixed-race groups of workers (see Table 1) but these categorizations help them to perform the distance and ensure that they are not confused with the customers, despite significant social similarities (Siblot 2002). The representations of women and racialized individuals indicate the existence of dynamics of stigmatization that salesmen use to locally dominate and seek a better position within the scale of masculinities. Expert masculinity is then a competitive asset that reproduces hierarchies of gender, class and race.
Conclusion
The article offers a new exploration of the tension between service work and masculinities, bringing together dimensions that are often treated separately, such as business models, organizations and gender, by following the thread that connects them. In its brand positioning, culture, and values, Bricostock exemplifies a “gendered organization” (Acker 1990) that favors the recruitment of men. The organization shapes the representations of managers, who value physical strength and encourage the expression of masculinities grounded on endurance and performance. Like many other business models, low-cost is not neutral: it has a significant impact on gender dynamics in the labor market, intensifying existing inequalities.
The article contributes to the study of masculinities among low-skilled service-sector workers, for whom labor continues to serve as a medium for performing gender. Many jobs of the new economy - such as low-cost hardware jobs - combine industrial and commercial logics, creating space for plural masculinities. Do these jobs change traditional working-class patterns, or do they reproduce them? Salesmen show different adaptations to these low-skilled service jobs. Masculinities of strength are characterized by the avoidance of the interactions with the clients and constitutes a reconfiguration of grafting masculinities in response to the constraints of service work and job insecurity. Conversely, expert and technical masculinities positively reappropriate the interactions, emphasizing and valuing the knowledge of salesmen. They create informal qualifications within a low-skilled job, which is a modern expression of the traditional crafting masculinities. Historical models persist, while also undergoing slight transformations through interaction with clients.
In sum, the article illustrates the conditions under which men maintain power and authority in low-skilled service jobs. Salesmen seek to construct respectability using different resources, within a context of class subordination. Working-class masculinities are thus performances embedded in class, race, gender and seniority relations, including, notably, a phenomenon of customer categorization that creates divisions and hierarchies. This highlights the fundamentally dynamic nature of masculinities: although predominantly marginalized, they can locally dominate other social groups, such as women and other men.
Footnotes
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research has been funded by a Phd contract provided by the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.