Katarzyna Suwada

Katarzyna Suwada
Nicolaus Copernicus University | umk · Institute of Sociology

PhD

About

55
Publications
13,397
Reads
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263
Citations
Introduction
Since October 2015 works in the Institute of Sociology of the Nicolaus Copernicus University (Toruń, Poland). Author of "Men, Fathering and the Gender Trap. Sweden and Poland Compared" (2017 Palgrave Macmillan) and "Parenting and Work in Poland" (2021 Springer).
Additional affiliations
September 2012 - June 2015
Polish Academy of Sciences
Position
  • Project manager / researcher
Description
  • project: Being Father and New Patterns of Fatherhood. Fathering in Everyday Life in Socio-Institutional Contexts of the Polish Society at the Beginning of the 21st Century research grant PRELUDIUM 2, National Research Centre in Poland
September 2018 - present
Journal of Family Studies
Position
  • Editor
October 2015 - present
Nicolaus Copernicus University
Position
  • Professor (Assistant)
Description
  • Teaching students of sociology, media studies & social work.
Education
October 2010 - March 2015
Graduate School for Social Research
Field of study
  • sociology, gender studies
October 2005 - June 2010
AGH University of Krakow
Field of study
  • sociology

Publications

Publications (55)
Book
This book provides an account of fatherhood and changing parental roles in Sweden and Poland. It uses a comparative perspective to show what men understand a father's role to be, and how they seek to live up to it. Fathering, the author argues, is a social phenomenon grounded in cultural patterns of parenting, gender roles and models of masculinity...
Article
This article compares and contrasts the attitudes of Polish and Swedish fathers to individualized or gender-neutral parental leaves popularly referred to as “daddy quotas.” The comparisons of two distinctively different societies that are characterized by very different family policy systems and gender-equality policies allow the article to explore...
Article
The aim of this article is to analyse the possibilities and decisions made about procreation by Polish parents in the context of the family policy system. Fertility is here under- stood as a result of individual decisions originating from an assessment of people's situations and potential barriers in parenting. This issue is important because Polis...
Book
Full-text available
The open access book provides a critical account of parenthood in Polish society. It uses a qualitative perspective to show how mothers and fathers engage with parenthood and also function in the labour market. Parenting in contemporary Poland is not only affected by individual preferences and choices, but significantly by the institutional context...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: The study examines the opportunity structures of fathers and mothers in Polish society in the context of their right to use parental leave. Background: The use of parental leave by fathers remains at a low level in Poland. The reasons for this lie in the way the family policy system is designed and also in cultural norms regarding care a...
Article
This study aims to present the concept of the feminization of unpaid work. We offer a conceptualization of this phenomenon based on the literature review and analysis of the experiences of Polish parents during COVID-19 pandemic. The feminization of unpaid work has cultural, economic, social, and institutional sources and manifests in women's domes...
Article
Full-text available
Kulturowa presja i instytucjonalne warunki jako determinanty feminizacji nieaktywności zarobkowej we współczesnej Polsce. Celem artykułu jest prezentacja zjawiska feminizacji nieaktywności zarobkowej, rozumianego jako zbiór procesów utrudniających kobietom w wieku aktywności zawodowej podejmowanie i utrzymywanie pracy zarobkowej. Autorzy odpowiadaj...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: This chapter introduces the reader to the Special Issue "Family Lives during the COVID-19 Pandemic in European Societies". Background: This Special Issue analyses how families, parents, and children have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how they have been coping with its related challenges in different societal contexts. Met...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this paper is to analyze four reforms introduced in the Polish family system in the 2010s. The reforms were introduced as an answer to a problem of very low fertility rates, as well as instruments helping women in achieving their work-life balance. The reforms are analyzed here in terms of their (de)genderization effects on Polish mother...
Book
Full-text available
‘The handbook provides an excellent blend of reassessment and reflection on what we know and how we know about families and intimate lives in Europe. Critical overviews and new insights are offered across a carefully chosen range of starting points.’ —Lynn Jamieson, Professor of Sociology, University of Edinburgh, UK, and series editor for Palgrave...
Article
Full-text available
W 2017 roku wśród osób korzystających z urlopu rodzicielskiego mężczyźni stanowili jedynie 1%. Celem tego artykułu jest analiza doświadczeń ojców, którzy zdecydowali się na wzięcie co najmniej dwóch miesięcy urlopu rodzicielskiego, i ich partnerek. Jest to grupa osób, które przekraczają dominujące normy kulturowe dotyczące płci i opieki. Interesuje...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter is devoted to the issue of paid work. Despite analyses dominating today that perceive paid work as an obstacle to parenting, I argue that paid work is an important obligation arising from parenthood. My analysis indicates that becoming a parent has consequences on how individuals perceive paid work. It becomes more important and there...
Chapter
Full-text available
The final chapter of the book briefly summarises the key points of the previous chapters and addresses the central conclusions of the book. I underline how analysing parenting from the perspective of three types of work (paid work, care work and domestic work) help to recognise prevailing gender and economic inequalities in Polish society. I also a...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter presents the issue of parenthood as a subject of sociological inquiry in the context of broader social and cultural changes. I demonstrate why parenthood should be perceived as a process that is strictly connected with social, cultural and institutional contexts. Keeping this in mind I argue that there is no one proper way of doing par...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter deals with the organisation of care work by Polish parents. Using the data from in-depth interviews and survey data, I demonstrate cultural norms about care that prevails in Polish society. Strong gendered norms and instruments of family policy shape different opportunity structures for men and women. I focus on how parental leaves are...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter deals with the last type of work distinguished in the beginning of the book—domestic work. Domestic work is often perceived as the most undesirable type of work. I describe here different attitudes of men and women to domestic work. My analysis shows great gender inequalities. Men are still perceived as helpers of women, whereas women...
Article
Full-text available
Abstrakt: Celem artykułu jest przyjrzenie się problematyce łączenia życia zawodowego z rodzicielstwem z perspektywy tak zwanej luki w opiece na dziećmi. Luka w opiece jest tutaj definiowana jako brak rozwiązań instytucjonalnych pozwalających na zapewnienie opieki nad małymi dziećmi. Analiza opiera się na badaniach jakościowych przeprowadzonych z po...
Article
Full-text available
Autorzy na podstawie analizy pamiętników osób bezrobotnych oraz studiów przypadku analizują relacje między doświadczeniem bezrobocia a relacjami rodzinnymi kobiet i mężczyzn. Wskazują, że płeć różnicuje zarówno przyczyny, jak i konsekwencje bezrobocia. W tekście wskazano problem opuszczania przez kobiety rynku pracy ze względu na macierzyństwo, spr...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of the article is to analyse social relations of people experiencing unemployment in today's Polish society on the basis of the data collected as a part of the "Memoirs of the Unemployed" project. In this paper, we investigate three types of relations: with family, with friends and acquaintances, and with labour market institutions. Our ana...
Poster
Full-text available
Studies on Men and Masculinities: Examples and Interpretations Guest Editors: Prof. Urszula Kluczyńska, Collegium Da Vinci, Poznań Dr. Katarzyna Suwada, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities (CSMM) have been an independent sub-discipline for over thirty years (Brod 1987; Kimmel, Hearn, and Conn...
Chapter
Full-text available
Celem niniejszego artykułu jest krytyczna refleksja nad procesem starzenia się społeczeństw w kontekście dynamicznego rozwoju nowych technologii, które mają wspierać osoby starsze. Rozważania dotyczą również wyzwań z tym związanych dla społeczeństwa jako całości, a także dla państwa. Oprócz tego mamy nadzieję, że rozpoczniemy dyskusję nad wpływem n...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The report produced in connection to participation as a national expert in one of the mutual learning seminars in gender equality organised by the European Commission. The seminar was titled "Long-Term Paternal Involvement in Family Work" and concerned isses connected to fathers' participation in family work, especially care work on children. The r...
Article
Full-text available
Męskości opiekuńcze. Zaangażowanie w ojcostwo a rekonstrukcja modeli męskości Celem artykułu jest analiza doświadczeń ojców, którzy w związku z ojcostwem zrezygno-wali z pracy zawodowej i poświęcili się opiece nad dziećmi. Ich doświadczenia są badane w kontekście teorii męskości opiekuńczych, która dostarcza narzędzi teoretycznych, po-zwalających n...
Chapter
This chapter is first, out of three, in which the experiences of Swedish and Polish fathers are described. Suwada starts with the ways in which men define the role of fathers. Focusing on men’s narratives, the chapter draws attention to the tensions between expectations arising from traditional and new models of fatherhood. Fatherhood can be percei...
Chapter
The way men define fatherhood is not always congruent with the actual practices men engage in as fathers. Thus, this chapter shows how Swedish and Polish men fulfil their parental obligations and in what kind of practices they involve themselves. Family life is an area based on power relations. Men can use their power to withdraw from those obligat...
Chapter
Fatherhood is an excellent subject of sociological research. Definitions and practices of fatherhood tell a lot about gender relations, power orders, masculinity and femininity models, the organisation of family life, as well as the organisation of paid and unpaid work in a particular society. The chapter shows how fatherhood is explored by sociolo...
Chapter
Men’s experience is often described as universal or generic. Men are seen as genderless human beings who do not face social expectations resulting from gender order and do not experience their gender in everyday life. Fatherhood studies show that such approach is fundamentally wrong. Research on men should be seen as a sub-discipline of critical st...
Chapter
The final chapter sums up the analysis presented in the previous chapters. Suwada uses the experiences of Swedish and Polish fathers to describe the gender relations, prevailing gender inequalities and gender order. The crucial problem seems to be the undervaluation of care and domestic work, which makes the project of gender equality hard to reali...
Chapter
In this chapter, Suwada locates the definitions of fatherhood in the broader institutional context. The chapter draws attention to the links between fatherhood (and parenthood in general) and welfare state system, in particular family policy instruments and labour market requirements. Family policy instruments should help people to achieve work–lif...
Chapter
Today, parenthood is a political issue. Western countries develop family policies that not only help people to reconcile family life with work in the labour market, but also promote particular models of mothering and fathering. In chapter 3, Suwada shows the links between different instruments of family policy, discourses around parenting dominatin...
Chapter
The aim of this chapter is to show how Polish and Swedish men achieve work-life balance, what attitudes they have to their parental obligations – whether they primarily understand them in terms of economic provisions for their families or in terms of care work. Many researchers reflect on the contextual factors that influence fathering today. Also...
Article
Full-text available
The purpose of this article is to document how Swedish and Polish fathers understand their parental roles in the times of changing gender relations. An important question is how they deal with two conflicting models of fatherhood – the traditional model based on breadwinning and the new model of involved fatherhood. I argue here that fatherhood is...
Article
Full-text available
This article focuses on the relations between men and women in the area of family life, and in particular the situation of fathers and their approach to biological differences between the genders. Using the theoretical perspective developed by Norbert Elias, the author shows how the organization of social life, which she considers to be based on th...
Article
Full-text available
Research indicates that the gender of a parent has a great impact on how s/he engages in parenting. The expectations towards men and women significantly differ and are strictly connected with dominating models of masculinity and femininity. They are also related to biological differences between men and women that often serve as a convenient explan...
Article
Full-text available
This article seeks to identify the relationships between fatherhood, masculinities, and the welfare state. The paper is based on fifty-two interviews conducted with Polish and Swedish fathers living with their biological children and their partners. A comparison of Polish and Swedish fathers enables us to comprehend how everyday practices and men’s...
Conference Paper
Parenthood must be concerned as one of areas within which reproduction of gendered practices occurs. In my paper I will try to show how Polish and Swedish fathers understand traditional parental roles, how they perceive biological and cultural differences between motherhood and fatherhood and what they think about gender equality within the househo...
Article
Full-text available
This issue of “Contributions to Humanities” presents various aspects of transitions to retirement in Europe, particularly in post-communist countries. The process of retirementis analysed from various points of view; to name afew: the political perspective and the challengesfaced by current public pension systems in ageing societies, the macro pers...
Article
Full-text available
The article deals with the issue of retirement in contemporary Polish society. The analysis is based on a qualitative research project conducted with people who had formally retired within the previous five years. The process of retiring is one of the most important turning points in the life course. The aim is to look more carefully at the experie...
Article
Full-text available
Celem artykułu jest pokazanie, w jaki sposób szwedzcy ojcowie postrzegają kwestie związane z równością płciową i rodzicielstwem. Kluczowy jest tutaj wpływ mechanizmów polityki rodzinnej na sposób myślenia mężczyzn. Artykuł składa się z dwóch części, w pierwszej z nich opisana jest w perspektywie historycznej szwedzka polityka rodzinna, ze szczególn...
Article
Full-text available
Celem artykułu jest pokazanie, w jaki sposób szwedzcy ojcowie postrzegają kwestie związane z równościąpłciową i rodzicielstwem. Kluczowy jest tutaj wpływ mechanizmów polityki rodzinnej na sposób myśleniamężczyzn. Artykuł składa się z dwóch części, w pierwszej z nich opisana jest w perspektywie historycznejszwedzka polityka rodzinna, ze szczególnym...
Book
Full-text available
W Polsce proces starzenia się ludności postępuje bardzo szybko, co zmienia kształt „polskiej kultury starości”. Na potrzeby niniejszej książki termin ten definiujemy jako zestaw norm i praktyk społeczno-kulturowych – realizowanych zarówno przez osoby starsze, jak i osoby młode wobec osób starszych – szczególnie istotnych na dalszych etapach życia....
Article
Full-text available
The article deals with the issue of retirement in contemporary Polish society. The analysis is based on a qualitative retiring is one of the most important turning points in the life course. The aim is to look more carefully at the experience of the initial years of retirement and the process of adjustment to a new social status. The article seeks...
Article
In the article the biography and theories of Norbert Elias, a sociologist who lived and wrote in 20th century, are presented. He tried to overcome the division between society and an individual, he opposed the reduction of processes to states and introduced the term “figuration”. Figurations underline the relational and processual character of soci...

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