Family policy paradoxesGender equality and labour market regulation in Sweden, 1930-2010
Abstract
This book examines the political regulation of the family in Sweden between 1930 and today. It draws attention to the political attempts to create a ‘modern family’ and the aspiration to regulate the family and establish gender equality, thereby shedding light on ongoing policy processes within Europe and how these can be understood in the light of a particular political experience.
... Definitions of care differ depending on societal and welfare context, and as a consequence, so do the structure of care provision (Leira, 1994:186). As mentioned above, with the emergence of the Swedish welfare state, care work increasingly became a collective concern, outsourced and organized by public means through, for example, public day care centers and elderly care (Lundqvist, 2011). This meant that parts of the unpaid care work previously performed by housewives and mothers were transformed into paid work, and as such, regulated by general working laws and agreements (although still mostly performed by women, less paid, and with lower status). ...
... When the Domestic Work Act was passed in the 1970s, it was done so in a spirit of it soon becoming obsolete: paid domestic work was to be taken over by the public sector, and care and housework were to be shared equally between men and women (Lundqvist, 2011). However, it is evident today that what was then considered a labor of the past is today becoming one of the present. ...
This paper focuses on the rules and regulations relating to au pair work in Sweden, and how these rules correlate with au pairing practices. The precarious position of au pairs has been highlighted before, but in addition, au pairs coming to Sweden also find themselves in an unclear work situation due to contradictory rules and regulations. While au pairs from outside the EU must apply for a work permit that defines their work as cultural exchange, this regulation does not apply to EU au pairs. As a consequence, we currently see the emergence of an almost completely unregulated— and growing—market for au pairing in Sweden. Drawing on a qualitative study of the private child care market in Sweden, this paper analyzes rules and regulations for au pairing, as well as how au pair working conditions are understood, negotiated, and realized by employing parents, and au pairs themselves. This is analyzed in relation to theoretical elaborations of paid and unpaid work, as well as discussions of care as a practice where ‘work’ and ‘emotion’ is inherently intertwined.
Political initiatives such as tax deductions for domestic services including nannies have, together with a growing au pair market, paved the way for new possibilities of organizing child care and parenting in Sweden. This affects everyday ‘local care loops’ for the upper-middle-class families purchasing the services, as the logistics of solving the work-family dilemma change with the possibility of hiring cheap female—and often migrant—care workers (Näre & Isaksen 2019). In this chapter, we analyse how this affects the doing of family in ‘nanny families’. Taking our point of departure in a qualitative study with nannies and au pairs ( n = 26), parents ( n = 29), and children receiving care ( n = 19) (Eldén and Anving 2019), we show how everyday care is experienced and understood from the perspective of different actors involved in the practice, with a special focus on ideas of ‘quality time’. We argue that the new possibilities of organizing care and time in families reproduce inequalities: the new local care loops enable the possibility for some—well-off—parents to realize ideals of ‘good and stress-free parenting’, with quality time with their children, while at the same time not giving up on the idea of gender equality.
In recent years, parenting support has gained traction in the Swedish welfare state in both policy and practice. Parenting is seen as determining child outcomes and are thus in need of knowledge and expertise. Yet, at the same time, parents are conceptualised as experts of their own child. The intriguing paradox between parents being experts while at the same time being in need of parenting support is the topic of this article.
Based on interviews with parenting support actors, we identify that parenting support actors are “reluctant expert”, keen to respect the autonomy of parents and careful not to appear paternalistic. However, according to the parenting support actors interviewed in this study, suppressing the expert role can also be a strategy to attract more parents and to foster the self-realisation of the “competent parent”.
It is argued that the “reluctant expert” and the “competent parent” can only be understood if parenting support practices are viewed as a form of micro-technologies for governing parents within a neoliberal frame, emphasising indirect and horizontal steering of parenthood and families. We propose to conceptualise this as “governing as peers”. Typical for the neoliberal frame is also that both problems and solutions are identified at the individual and family level, rather than the structural level, which infers a responsibilisation of parents.
This paper examines the different elements included in the Swedish partial individual taxation reform in 1971. The purpose is to identify what policy lessons this reform holds for contemporary tax policy in the European Union member states that currently apply joint tax and benefit provisions. Even though contemporary circumstances have changed in relation to the historical context for Swedish reform, the common strand is that the provisions create both inactivity incentives on the labor market and low income traps for secondary earners. We suggest that a shift to individual taxation should be a part of family and social policies that promote gender equality, and that in turn should be consolidated within a sustainable idea about tax fairness.
Den här artikeln ämnar ge en överblick över svensk föräldraförsäkring ur ett jämställdhetsperspektiv. Jag beskriver utvecklingen
av försäkringen sedan dess införande på 1970-talet, samt hur och av vem föräldraledighet används. Därefter exemplifierar jag
konsekvenser av användningen för fortsatt uppdelning av omvårdnad av barn och annat hushållsarbete samt för inkomstutveckling för
kvinnor och män. Resultaten visar tydliga samband mellan en ojämn uppdelning av föräldraledighet och fortsatt sned uppdelning av
omvårdnad och hushållsarbete, samt för kvinnor en sämre inkomstutveckling, Artikeln avslutas med en diskussion om
föräldraförsäkringens framtid.
Der Beitrag zeichnet aus politikgeschichtlicher Sicht das liehen und Wirken von Gustav Möller nach, einem nichtigen Vordenker der schwedischen Sozialdemokratie zwischen den 1920er und 1950er Jahren. Ziel ist es, die Bedeutung des ehemaligen Parteisekretärs und Sözialministers für den sozialdemokratischen Pfad von Wohlfahrtsstaatlichkeit – auch im Kontext der heutigen Theorie- und Reformdebatten – zu würdigen. Es wird gezeigt, dass die Kindheit im Armuts- und Arbeitermilieu von Malmö ebenso wie spätere programmatische Einflüsse der dänischen Sozialdemokratie einen prägenden Einfluss auf die Entwicklung seiner Grundideen einer generellen Wohlfahrtspolitik hatten. Der von Gustav Möller als Sozialminister zwischen 1924–1926 und 1932–1951 eingeleitete Ausbau sozialer Grundsicherung macht deutlich, dass ihm eine herausragende Bedeutung als Vordenker eines „universalistischen Wohlfahrtsstaates“ sowohl in Anlehnung als auch in Abgrenzung zum britischen „Beveridge-Plan“ zukommt. Die heute als „Möller-Linie“ bezeichnete Variante sozialpolitischen Denkens ist in praktischer und theoretischer Hinsicht als zentrale Grundlage für die spätere Unterscheidung zwischen universalistischer und selektivistischer Wohlfahrtpolitik nach Richard M. Titmuss (1967) einzustufen.
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