Women, policy and politics. The construction of policy problems

Whose Reality Counts

Making Men Into Fathers: Men, Masculinities and the Social Politics of Fatherhood Barbara Hobson (Ed) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002 328 pp ISBN 0-521-80927-- 4 $6000 cloth; ISBN 0-521-00612-0 $2200 (paper) For those interested in a comparative, policy-- oriented treatment of fatherhood in Western industrialized societies, Barbara Hobson's edited collection has much to offer This unique volume grew out of a multiyear collaborative effort involving scholars with diverse interests in fatherhood, gender, welfare states, and social policy Those societies systematically addressed in this book include Britain, Germany, Hungry, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United States, with selective commentary on other Scandinavian countries This volume's integrative flavor is enhanced by Hobson's and David Morgan's introductory essay that advances an institutional framework for considering the politics of fatherhood The essay delineates three interrelated conceptual triangles that, to varying degree, inform the case studies about national policies: family, market, and state institutions; husband, wife, and parent/child; and fathers, fathering, and fatherhood Conceptualizing the key issues in this manner draws attention to the complex, multilayered nature of the fatherhood terrain Importantly, the second triangle dealing with the domestic sphere is critical to social policy debates and initiatives that speak to feminist concerns about male breadwinning norms Morgan's epilogue further clarifies and extends the objective of this comparative project on fatherhood by showing how the practice of fathering is situated within a network of social structures and institutional forces, including the welfare system Sandwiched between the introduction and epilogue are nine chapters of varying quality and style One of the strengths of this material is that most of the authors discuss the historical evolution of key social policies that have led to the current state of affairs in the respective countries being studied Those who have limited familiarity with European family policy will find this approach useful Excluding Livia Olah, Eva Bernhardt, and Frances Goldscheider's comparative and statistical analysis of parental roles in Sweden, Hungary, and the United States, the chapters are largely descriptive and thematic essays about the social politics of fatherhood The volume is not designed to provide new analyses of fathering experiences per se …

Making Men into Fathers: Men, Masculinities and the Social Politics of Fatherhood

• Gøsta Esping-Andersen Social Foundations of Post-Industrial Economies

Aspiring to a Higher Rank: Swedish Factor Prices and Productivity in International Perspective, 1860–1950. Gothenburg Studies in Economic History 1 (2008) ISBN 978-91-86217-00-6 Author: Svante Prado Doctoral Dissertation at the Department of Economic History, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 720, SE-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden. (Written in English) Distribution: The Department of Economic History, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 720, SE-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden. This dissertation consists of four chapters which expand on the Swedish economic development in an international perspective between 1860 and 1950. The overarching theme is how the Swedish rise, from backwardness to prosperity, is best understood. Chapter 1 identifies two types of recent convergence literature which venture into explorations of the causes of convergence at disaggregated levels of GDP per capita. The first has measured convergence in terms of movements of land prices and real wages for unskilled workers, and stressed the significance of external forces, such as trade, mass migration and capital flows. The other has established comparative levels of labour productivity for different sectors of the economy, and shown that these levels in the manufacturing sector have remained stable in the long-run. The introductory chapter is followed by two chapters which examine factor prices, while chapters 4 and 5 focus on productivity. Chapter 2 shows that previous accounts of factor price convergence have overestimated the Swedish catch up because of their reliance on a flawed real wages series for unskilled workers. When a more representative wage series is used and compared to similar real wage series for the UK and the US, much of the alleged catch up slips away. Convergence did take place but at a slower pace than was previously claimed. The third chapter tempers the claim by the recent convergence literature that the Swedish wage-rental ratio increased steeply before World War I. By using a more representative series of land prices it is shown that the Swedish wage-rental ratio moved in a manner similar to other protectionist countries’ wage-rental ratios, which fits well with the protectionist turn in Swedish trade policy in 1888. The chapter concludes that domestic growth forces overwhelm the importance of external factors and trade policy in understanding the evolution of the wage-rental ratio. The fourth chapter establishes comparative levels of Swedish labour productivity in the manufacturing industry vis-à-vis the UK and the US and shows that Swedish convergence was manifest around the turn of the century and in the 1930s and 1940s. Thus, there is no sign of stability in the long-run evolution of relative productivity levels. As a follow up to this finding, the last chapter penetrates deeper into productivity patterns in the Swedish manufacturing industry. It shows that whereas the magnitudes of real cost reductions among industries were quite unevenly distributed until the turn of the century, a more uniform pattern began to assert itself in the decade preceding World War I. That invites efforts to search for common underlying stimuli, what economists and economic historians refer to as a general purpose technology (GPT). One that may have exercised an impact on productivity is electricity.

Aspiring to a Higher Rank. Swedish Factor Prices and Productivity in International Perspective 1860-1950

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Trying to make a living: studies in the economic life of women in interwar sweden

Sweden’s proven ability to enact family-friendly policies to support its gender equality ambitions has made it an exemplar of gender equality to emulate among developing countries. The aim of this ...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0049085719901067

How Gender Equal Is Sweden? An Analysis of the Shift in Focus under Neoliberalism:

In feminist political ecological discourses, women are seen as potential initiators and actors in collective action. Gendered differential practices in sustaining certain forms of collective action...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0971521519891479

Women’s Collectives and Collective Action for Food and Energy Security: Reflections from a Community of Practice (CoP) Perspective:

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the promise of #MeToo movement for reporting and preventing sexual harassment (SH). The article engages with definitions of SH and theories of whistleblowing dialogue with illustrative #MeToo narratives to discuss why reports of SH take long time to surface and why they may remain unreported and unaddressed. The empirical illustrations were gathered from Swedish newspaper articles, social media, radio, and television programs beginning autumn 2017. To set the stage, we begin with short presentations of sexual harassment and whistleblowing processes followed by three short illustrative cases. Our tentative findings show that when considering SH, organisation leaders have important roles in the whistleblowing process as they communicate organisational expectations, values and norms about acceptable behaviour. In the Swedish context, the explicit political stance to #MeToo taken by Swedish Government and Discrimination Ombudsman were crucial in starting and sustaining initiatives to support employees and their organisations in these efforts.

The Promise of the #MeToo Movement for Preventing and Reporting Sexual Harassment

Under colonialism, the mirror of the black-white binary has been shattered by white colonials consorting with black and indigenous women. By privileging lighter-skinned mixed-race groups, colonialists established a hierarchy that linked skin colour to economic and social class. Therefore, we argue that to understand the texts of Frantz Fanon and Mayotte Capecia requires analytical tools that resist seeing the world in black or white. Our reading of Fanon seeks to broaden the scope of analysis of these texts by looking at them as works standing at the crossroads where issues of race, colour, gender, class, and power converge. Blaming women absolves men from the painful reality that they are also partners in this construction. As two black women, we have been fascinated by the depth of Fanon’s understanding of the mechanisms and ideology of colonial oppression. However, the way Fanon deals with the desire of the black man to be whitened by his association to a white woman is very different from a reverse situation between a black woman and a white man. Both seek their redemption by the association to whiteness—lightness.

Linda Lane

Papers

Trying to make a living: studies in the economic life of women in interwar sweden

How Gender Equal Is Sweden? An Analysis of the Shift in Focus under Neoliberalism:

Women’s Collectives and Collective Action for Food and Energy Security: Reflections from a Community of Practice (CoP) Perspective:

The Promise of the #MeToo Movement for Preventing and Reporting Sexual Harassment

Fanon Revisited: Race Gender and Coloniality Vis-à-Vis Skin Colour