The roles of men and women have been lively discussed and investigated in the fields of psychology and sociology for years. This discussion has recently reached the field of management and leadership studies as well. However, in the studies of working life the work women do has for a long time remained rather invisible and gender has only been a variable among others.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of sex roles, gender and their influence on the studies of working life, with special focus on supervisory and leadership studies of working life. Before inspecting the emergence of gender in the studies of working life, it is, however, necessary to specify the concepts used and some of the models by which women's employment and the segmentation of the labour market have been explained. In addition, some implications for counselling are discussed.