IFSAM-ANZAM Conference 2002 Albert J. Mills, Gold Coast, Australia Saint Mary's University, July 10-13 Halifax, NS, Canada Jean Helm Mills, Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada MASCULINITY AND THE MAKING OF TRANS-CANADA AIR LINES, 1938-1940 This paper presents preliminary results of a study of the gendering of airline culture over time. Through a focus on men and masculinity, the paper presents an analysis of key gendered influences that shaped the development of Trans-Canada Air Lines, the predecessor of Air Canada. Introduction Within the literature on gender and organizations `organizational culture' has been identified as an important arena for the development and generation of discriminatory practices (Sinclair, 1998). While a number of studies have explored contemporary aspects of the relationship between gender and the culture of an organization (cf .Wilson, 1997), few have analysed that relationship over time (Morgan, 1988 is a notable exception). The importance of the latter approach, we contend, is that it allows us to track not only the manifestations of discriminatory practices but also how they develop and change over time (Helms Mills & Mills, 2000). In this way we can gain an understanding of the processes of change that are central to the problem of redressing discrimination at work. To that end, we have embarked on a longitudinal study of the gendering of Air Canada, from its founding as the state-owned Trans-Canada Air Lines (TCA) in 1937 to the current privately-owned Air Canada. This paper reports on the initial phase of the research. Our approach is informed by a complex theory of cultures that combines elements of metaphor (Smircich, 1983), rules theory (Mills, 1988), sensemaking (Weick, 1995), and foucauldian (Foucault, 1980) and feminist (Acker, 1992; Calás & Smircich, 1996) analysis. Simply put, we contend that organizational culture, as a root metaphor, is an important heuristic for the study of the gendering of organizations over time. We take a "differentiation " (Martin, 2002) or "managerial realist" (Reed, 1992) approach , viewing the notion of organizational rule as "theoretically grounded in a model of the organization as an interrelated network of social practices through which a wide multiplicity of activities are assembled to form institutionalised frameworks or patterns of collective action sustained over time and place by a matrix of rules (Reed, 1992: 183). In this specific case we are concerned with how dominant forms of masculinity informed activity in the early stages of the airline. Here we draw on the work of Collinson and Hearn (Collinson & Hearn, 1994; Collinson & Hearn, 1996) who argue that the role of men and masculinity has been largely ignored in analysis of gendered practices. In studying cultures over time we draw on the notion of junctures to identify specific points of "on-going sensemaking" (Weick, 1995). We understand a juncture to be a point in time where a combination of factors shapes a dominant sense of situation that has significant outcomes for those involved. Our notion of juncture is structured around the employment of women. Thus, for example, no women were employed by TCA between April 1937 and July 1938, and between