This study explored the role of gender and migration status (native-born vs. foreign-born) in the extent of family caregiving and in its self-reported consequences in well-being, work performance, labor force participation, and household finances among working carers in Sweden. The analysis uses data from a nationally representative survey conducted in 2013 (n = 3,630). The results show that foreign-born working carers provided more intensive care and reported being more negatively affected by caregiving, which applied to both genders. Among the four groups under study, foreign-born women faced the most severe consequences, as their economic independence was undermined.

Det här kapitlet beskriver förekomsten av hot och våld gentemot personal som utför sociala insatser i klienters hem samt undersöker hur personal upplever och tolkar hot och våld från klienter. Resultaten bygger på 2431 anmälningar om arbetsolycksfall orsakade av hot och våld inkomna till Arbetsmiljöverket under åren 2009–2019 samt intervjuer med 79 personal inom öppna sociala insatser: hemtjänst, boendestöd, personlig assistans samt öppenvårdsbehandling för familjer med barn och personer med problematiskt substansbruk. Resultaten visar att antalet anmälningar om våld ökat över tid och att personal som utför personnära omsorgsinsatser är mest utsatta. Anmälningar gällande hot ligger emellertid lågt under tidsperioden. Analysen av intervjuerna visar att personalen i huvudsak tolkar hot och våld i linje med en professionell logik där hantering och förebyggande ses som om del i personalens arbete. Denna logik döljer de organisatoriska faktorer som ökar risken för hot och våld. En slutsats är därför att det behövs mer nyanserade angreppssätt för att förebygga hot och våld inom olika omsorgssektorn, som tar hänsyn till såväl klientens problematik, personalens kompetens och organisatoriska faktorer.

Social services in the welfare sector consist of women-dominated jobs generally characterised by arduous working conditions, including exposure to client violence. Although there is a rather extensive research base on client violence in institutional social services, less is known about how client violence is handled in noninstitutional social services. Using longitudinal data obtained from the Swedish Work Environment Agency's register on work injuries caused by workplace violence, we examined the effects of organisational factors and employee characteristics on the reporting of client violence in noninstitutional social services. We found that most of the reports about work injuries caused by client violence are filed by public employers and that most reports concern occupational groups performing direct care services in clients' homes. Moreover, although most reports include female employees and incidents of physical violence, reports concerning male employees are comparatively more likely to include physical violence, and reports concerning female employees are comparatively more likely to include threats. Taken together, our findings point to a much-needed improvement of health and safety measures for care workers in noninstitutional social services in Sweden.

This chapter critically explores assumptions underpinning Swedish eldercare policies that small-scale entrepreneurship advances women’s and immigrants’ position in the economy. In contrast, the chapter shows that small-scale entrepreneurship in Swedish home care, in various ways, causes harm to women and immigrant business operators. The harm can be summarised in three main points; (1) small-scale entrepreneurship deprives women and immigrant business operators of financial resources; (2) small-scale entrepreneurship contributes to the undervaluation of care work performed by women and immigrants; and (3) small-scale entrepreneurship particularly harms immigrant women, who are not only deprived of financial resources but also drained of emotional and physical resources. Therefore, the chapter concludes that, in practice, small-scale entrepreneurship in Swedish eldercare transfers risks and responsibilities for care services back to individual women, which is a complete reversal of how the Swedish state hitherto has supported gender equality.

This paper explores how workers in the women-dominated public sector in Sweden speak about and make sense of gender and intragroup conflict and the consequences of this way of thinking and acting for gender equality at work. Using qualitative interviews with 26 first-level managers and employees, we introduce an analytical framework that employs critical discourse psychology and the conceptualization of a postfeminist sensibility at work. We identified three competing meanings (postfeminist storylines) of gender and intragroup conflict: Supporting the gendered meanings of conflict, Unawareness of conflict’s gendered meanings and Counteracting the gendered meanings of conflict. The welfare workers acknowledged the role of gender in intragroup conflicts but, paradoxically, constructed their own workplaces as gender neutral, without inequalities related to gender. We interpret these three postfeminist storylines as coping strategies; that is, as ways to make sense of the false promise of gender egalitarianism that characterizes the Swedish labour market.

Consumer choice models have been introduced in eldercare services in several Western welfare societies. Choice models in eldercare emphasise the importance of individuals’ abilities to make informed choices and therefore entail a risk for increased inequalities among older adults with care needs. In the Nordic countries, such inequality risks are in stark contrast to universal policy ambitions of equal access to care services. Care managers, who are responsible for needs assessment for eldercare services, have a central role in implementing policies and, thus, have first-hand experience of their impact on older adults’ access to care. The aim of this study was to explore care managers’ experiences of how user choice affects older adults’ access to care services in three Nordic cities: Copenhagen, Tampere, and Stockholm. These cities were purposely selected as forerunners in marketisation, with different ways of implementing choice models. Semi-structured interviews with care managers were conducted in Copenhagen, Tampere, and Stockholm and analysed thematically. The findings indicate there are difficulties related to older adults’ ability to access information needed to make informed choices, as well as limitations in choice related to available services and personal finances. Further, care managers find that older adults’ abilities to overcome these difficulties are shaped by their health, education, language skills, and assistance from relatives. In order to reduce the risk of choice models increasing the gap between older adults with different resources and capabilities, there is a need to develop accessible information, as well as models for professional guidance.

Focusing on Swedish home care for older people, this article explores the discursive (re)production of home care as an institution. Equality and universal service provision have been described as defining features of the Nordic care regime. At the same time, Nordic research has highlighted a shift in social care policy, from a focus on universalism and egalitarian ideals towards a focus on freedom of choice, diversity and individualised services. This article takes as a starting point that home care for older people is formed by different and potentially conflicting ideas. We understand home care as a contested formation and define institutional change in terms of ongoing discursive struggles. The analysis draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews with key informants, including politicians, local authority officials and representatives of interest organisations. Informants were engaged in policy making, implementation or advocacy related to care for older people. We examine the meanings attached to home care for older people and the analysis reveals three different discourses – on choice, needs and equality. By comparing and contrasting discourses, we reveal silences, conflicts and tensions, and highlight the politics involved in (re)creating home care as an institution.

Workplace violence in health and social care is a serious public health issue. Given the fact that women comprise the majority of employees in health and social care, women working in these sectors are at higher risk of becoming victims of workplace violence. Concurrently, studies indicate that organisational policies and managers downplay workplace violence in health and social care as being part of the job. Against this backdrop, we explore discourses on workplace violence in Swedish disability care services and the underpinning materiality. Based on interviews with 96 front-line managers and care workers in four different types of disability services, we study how norms of gender are embedded in managers’ and employees’ representations of workplace violence and how this contributes to normalising workplace violence in disability services.

This paper contributes a Swedish perspective on how selected feminist movement ideas, such as women's right to economic independence, are being appropriated by neoliberal policies. Swedish governments have argued that opening up the publicly funded eldercare sector to private providers would advance entrepreneurship undertaken by women and immigrants. In this article, we critically explore the ambiguity of the gender equality and ethnic diversity arguments used to justify private sector involvement in publicly funded eldercare in Sweden. We draw upon Carol Bacchi's theory of policies as gendering practices to argue that the discourses of equal opportunity underpinning the politics of entrepreneurship in the home care sector obscure and recreate inequalities. Our analysis, based on interviews with politicians, public officials and interest organizations involved in the market for Swedish eldercare, shows that the politics of entrepreneurship in the home care sector privilege entrepreneurs who reflect the white masculine gendering of entrepreneurship and disadvantage those with subject positions deviating from the normative entrepreneur. Our findings suggest that policy-engineered entrepreneurship is a poor tool in the struggle for gender equality, as this kind of policymaking is likely to operate in tandem with gendering and racializing practices that impede socioeconomic progress.