JUSSI TURTIAINEN AND ARI VÄÄNÄNEN Men of Steel? The Masculinity of Metal Industry Workers in Finland after World War II Abstract This article examines the masculinity of metal workers in the post-WWII era of reparation and radical societal change in Finland. Young men from agrarian communities took on employment in metal industry jobs in droves after WWII. In this paper, metal workers’ masculinity is explored in three areas: (a) the transitional period when young men took their first steps in the shoes of metal workers; (b) defining the personal territory of work; and (c) the men’s physical capacity to bear their strenuous work. The sources we draw on are the metal workers’ work-life stories and workplace narratives in which they write about their personal experiences of work and their attitude about the trade. According to our analyses, metal workers’ culture was a double- edged sword. Male workers respected the skills, strength, and autonomy of their trade, but the work in itself and the habits and informal norms of the masculine industrial culture were often harmful to their health. Hence, although the masculinity of the post-war industrial era helped these men to overcome daily difficulties and to find collective strength when needed, masculinity was also connected to risk-taking, and even with illnesses and premature death. Introduction The metal industry became a significant source of employment in Finland after WWII. This article portrays the metal worker’s masculinity in the Finnish metal industry from 1945 to 1969. This period saw agricultural society undergo major transformation into an industrial, urbanized class society that led to a vibrant phase of expansion in the metal industry. Whereas the number of metal workers in the 1930s was over 20,000, by the 1960s it had increased to 100,000. 1 Metal workers labored at various tasks: in foundry work; forging and welding; doing surface treatment; and mechanizing. 2 Most of the metal products were exported to the Soviet Union, and the Finnish national economy suffered from instability due to its dependence on export markets. The period under study was characterized by unstable labor markets and a power struggle between the Social Democrats and the Communists. Disagreement about wages and contract terms was recurrent amid working groups and between the trade unions and employers: “Employers’ sphere of influence remained wider in Finland than in the other Nordic coun- tries, where the trade union movement had become much stronger until the early 1970s. At the same time, however, there remained an unregulated space for strife between the ‘official’ work organization governed by employers and workers’‘informal norms.’” 3 The rationalization of reparation and rebuilding did Journal of Social History vol. 46 no. 2 (2012), pp. 449–472 doi:10.1093/jsh/shs100 © The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. at University of Helsinki, Social science library on June 11, 2013 http://jsh.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from