Women in the Armed Forces all over the world are in minority in general. In the Swedish Armed Forces only 7% of the officers are female and for every hierarchal step the percentage decreases. The aim of this study is to increase the knowledge of genderrelations in maledominated organizations where a pressure exists to change these relations. The study focuses on how these relations influence women´s oppertunitys in making a career.
The study is conducted through a survey where women and men are asked questions designed after Joan Acker´s theory of “Doing gender” and Rosabeth Moss Kanter´s theory of empowerment.
The result of this study shows that women and men choose to make a career for mostly the same reasons but have different opinions of the possibilities for men and women. According to Kanter´s theory of empowerment this can be explained by the social networks that men have but women are excluded from. Also the opinions of equal presuppositions diverse between men and women and through the lens of Acker´s theory of gendered organizations this is due to the day-to-day practices where women are deviant from the male norm and also from being absent from work when having children.