The “Truly Creative” Florists: When Creativity Becomes a Gendered Privilege

Zinn, Isabelle (2019). The “Truly Creative” Florists: When Creativity Becomes a Gendered Privilege Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 48(3), pp. 429-447. Sage 10.1177/0891241618792074

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This article addresses the question of how creativity is displayed among florists working in Switzerland, and how exactly gender plays out in this process. It investigates how the florists refer to creativity as a natural skill, according to which criteria these “creative identities” are allocated, and how gender intersects with this allocation process. Drawing on thirty-six months of ethnographic research in various occupational settings, I will examine the gendering of creativity and its unequal allocation among workers in a highly feminized occupation. This article brings to light that although the scope for creativity is first presented as equally distributed among women and men, it becomes gendered upon a closer look: male florists tend to be perceived as truly creative. The resulting inequality is important to understand in order to unveil certain underlying mechanisms at play: even in a highly feminized occupation, masculinity appears to be strongly associated with professional competence.

Item Type:	Journal Article (Original Article)
Division/Institute:	Business School > Institute for New Work > Diversity and Inclusion Business School
Name:	Zinn, Isabelle0000-0003-1272-5415
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
ISSN:	0891-2416
Publisher:	Sage
Language:	English
Submitter:	Isabelle Zinn
Date Deposited:	20 Oct 2023 11:29
Last Modified:	20 Oct 2023 11:29
Publisher DOI:	10.1177/0891241618792074
ARBOR DOI:	10.24451/arbor.20179
URI:	https://arbor.bfh.ch/id/eprint/20179