The chapter examines the development of publicly financed childcare (PFC) and cash for care in Finland, Norway, and Sweden, from the 1960s until today. These three countries show quite different development trajectories over time. In all three, but especially Finland and Sweden, women entered the labor market before the PFC services had developed and childcare was initially arranged privately. Informal family day care was eventally replaced by formal family day carers being employed by the municipality. This happened less in Norway, where women entered the labor market later. Preschool activity then expanded over time, first in Sweden and somewhat later in Finland and Norway. Over time preschools became the dominant form of childcare, but the prevalence of cash for care differentiates the situation in the three countries, especially regarding children's age at start of PFC. Today, Finland is the country where cash for care is still widely used and children start later in preschools. The chapter also describes the comparative cost and subsidized fees of PFC, when various parental groups got access to PFC, and indicators of quality in the three countries. The authors draw the conclusion that the motivation to expand PFC to facilitate women's work has today been replaced by a motivation centered around children's needs, a move in which informal caregivers have been replaced by educated preschool teachers.
Denna rapport ingår som ett bidrag till Jämställdhetsmyndighetens uppdrag att redovisa och samlat analysera åtgärder som vidtagits för att nå de jämställdhetspolitiska målen och som utgör en del av myndighetens uppföljningssystem av jämställdhetspolitiken.
Structural factors are greatly significant for an individual’s life chances and possibilities for an academic career. Basic factors include when one is born, where one is born and who one’s parents are, factors over which no person has any influence (Kvist et al. 2012, p. 4). As far as the first two are concerned, I was lucky: I was born in Sweden in 1940. Already at that time, Sweden was a democratic and comparatively developed, industrialized and rich country, and a country which over time became even more developed, industrialized and rich, partly because Sweden had the economic advantage of not having participated in the Second World War. As far as my parents are concerned, I was not fortunate to the same extent, which is discussed below. Regarding the three factors mentioned above over which you have no control could be added whether you are born as a boy or a girl.1 Women’s possibility of becoming a professor is still smaller than men’s; only about 20 per cent of the professors in Sweden are women.
Jämställdhet, och i än högre grad kvinnor, nämns allt oftare i statsbudgeten – med en skarpare ökning sedan 2014. Det betyder inte per automatik att jämställdhet främjas konstaterar Anita Nyberg, genusvetare och professor emerita vid Stockholms universitet, och analyserar, med nedslag i några av åtgärderna, effekter av budgeten för 2018.
The aim of this article is to give an overview of gender equality policy in Sweden from the 1970s until today. A number of political measures and whether these measures individually, as well as combined, have promoted gender equality and the dual-earner/dual-carer model are described and analyzed. The conclusion is that the right to part-time work, publicly financed child care, parental leave, and tax deductions for domestic services make it easier for mothers to reconcile work and family, but do not challenge the distribution of family responsibilities between women and men. However, the individual right for fathers to 2 months of parental leave does challenge the gender order, to a certain extent, and fathers today participate more in care and domestic work than earlier. The dual-earner/dual-carer family is closer at hand when women have a higher education and earnings and thereby greater bargaining power. Employed work is more conditional among women with a lower education level, i.e., they may be employed but under the constraint that they are still responsible for care and domestic work in the family. Another constraint in this group where many work part-time is the lack of available full-time positions in the labor market.
I Ekonomisk Debatt nr 3, 2003, publicerades en artikel skriven av Christina Jonung och Ann-Charlotte Ståhlberg – ”Nationalekonomins frukter – även för kvinnor?” De pekade på att andelen kvinnor inom nationalekonomi hade ökat de tre senaste decennierna men att disciplinen trots detta fortfarande var mansdominerad. Denna artikel ställer frågan om nationalekonomi är jämställt idag nästan 20 år senare och om det i så fall satt några spår i nationalekonomisk forskning?
An important principle in the Swedish welfare model is that all adults – women and men, mothers and fathers – should have the possibility to support themselves through wage work. Public child care constitutes a very important part of the social infrastructure which should make this possible (Bergqvist & Nyberg 2001, 2002). However, an adequate supply of public child care is not enough; it should also be accessible, of high quality and affordable. If not, public child care risks being a marginal phenomenon, a last resort for mothers (parents) who do not have a choice. The policies laying the foundations of the dual earner model emerged in Sweden in the course of the 1960s and 1970s (Sainsbury 1996, 1999; Bergqvist et al. 1999; Löfström 2004). A new approach to gender equality in both employment and responsibility for children and family became acknowledged in the law and in policies, if not always in practice. However, at the beginning of the 1990s there was a sharp economic downturn. The employment rate fell dramatically and unemployment soared to levels unthinkable since the 1930s.1 The employment crisis, in turn, produced an accelerating public sector deficit, with revenues plummeting and public expenditures shooting up.2 The situation began to improve only as the decade came to an end, but the employment rate is considerably lower today than in 1990, while the unemployment rate is much higher and this is true for both women and men. In addition to the economic crisis, there were also other factors that might constitute a challenge to the stability of the traditional Swedish welfare model, the dual earner model and gender equality. First, the Social Democratic Party lost its historically dominant position, which opened the way for neo-liberal ideas on market forces and privatisation. The internationalisation of capital markets and financial transactions, plus Sweden’s participation in the European integration project also posed new challenges. Given the unemployment situation, the financial strains, globalisation, and the spread of neo-liberal ideas, it is reasonable to assume that serious attempts to transform the Swedish welfare state might have been undertaken and the dual earner model might be undermined. The aim of this article is to assess the consequences of the economic crisis on publicly financed child care. What happened to the supply of child care, to the accessibility, affordability and to the quality in public child care between 1990 and 2005? To start with, however, the background in terms of mothers’ employment and the expansion of public child care is briefly presented.
In Sweden the unadjusted gender pay gap was 11.3 percent and the adjusted 4.3 percent in 2017. The Discrimination Act states that in order to discover, remedy and prevent unfair gender differences in pay and other terms of employment, the employer is to annually survey and analyse provisions and other terms of employment that are used by the employer, and pay differences between women and men performing work that is to be regarded as equal or of equal value (Section 8). Employers who employ ten or more workers are to document in writing their work on pay surveys. Employers and employees are to cooperate in this work.
The social partners are responsible for wage formation in Sweden. The degree of organisation is high both among employers and employees. There are around 55 employer organisations and 60 unions. There are 668 national collective agreements about wages and general terms of employment.1 Negotiations may take place on the central as well as on the local level. Central wage formation is most common in the private sector while local wage formation is most common in the public sector. In 2018, 65 percent of the employed men and 72 percent of the employed women were members of a union and the share of employees covered by collective agreements was 89 percent.
When federal income taxation was introduced in Sweden in 1902, it was perceived as natural to jointly tax the spouses’ incomes and wealth since the husband was the wife’s guardian (Welinder1974 p. 152). It also mirrored a society where agriculture dominated and both spouses often worked on a small farm and married women employed outside the farm or the home were rare (Nyberg 1989). Even though married women had the right to control their own income since 1874, they did not become legally competent until the Marriage Act of 1921. Men’s right to exercise power and control within the family was then abolished and married women and men had equal decision-making rights over family finances (Niskanen 2004). However, even if this was a break-through for women, the new law was introduced with a key limitation: it was only valid for marriages entered into after 1920. For older marriages, transitional rules were created, which were not done away with until 1950.