Föreställningar om klass och kön i Arbetsförmedlingens yrkesbeskrivningar?

Notions of Class and Gender in the Employment Service Job Descriptions This article examines whether job descriptions emphasize different characteristics and competences depending on the occupations’ social class and gender relations. The study is partly a replication of a similar analysis conducted by Gesser in the 1970s. The purpose is to examine the prevalence of stereotypes in occupational descriptions provided by the Swedish state, and if the descriptions contribute to class and gender labeling of occupations and, by extension, its practitioners. Previous research has shown that career guiding materials are characterized by notions of the appropriate practitioner’s class and gender. In this study we depart from the concept of doxa and argue that stereotypical images of occupations are based on common sense that remains unquestioned. The study draws on a quantitative content analysis of 420 job descriptions analyzed by various statistical methods. The overall results show that there are systematic differences. In general, social class seems to have greater impact than gender on what kind of competences that are emphasized in the descriptions. Social skills are emphasized in female dominated occupations, while physical abilities are highlighted in male-dominated occupations. To some extent, these results are uncontroversial, as it also portraits abilities necessary to do the work in different kind of occupations

Man kan både sitta bredbent och med benen i kors : En kvalitativ studie om hur genusvetare praktiserar genuskunskap

There is an awareness of the importance of gender equality in most western societies, both at the political level and in everyday life. In academia, for instance, gender is nowadays a scientific field which indicates that there is a lot of knowledge about the subject. What we do not have much knowledge about is whether gender knowledge leads to changes in gender relations in practice. The aim of this study is to explore how gender scholars relate to using – practicing – gender knowledge. Key issues in this study are how gender scholars construct gender, how they practice gender theoretical knowledge, and their reflections of gender boundaries.             Theoretically, this study is mainly based on Sara Ahmed’s perspective on gender. The main finding of the study is that despite gender knowledge gender scholars tend to reproduce traditional gender orders. By identifying concepts such as reflected and unreflected masculinity/femininity, different ideals of masculinity/femininity are made visible. There seems to be an ideal among gender scholars to practice their gender knowledge. This ideal is practiced among “gender scholar women” by doing reflected masculinity and reflected femininity. Among “gender scholar men”, however, the ideal to practice gender knowledge by doing unreflected masculinity and reflected femininity seems to be a taboo at the same time. For men, it seems important to mark a distance to a certain type of femininity and to maintain the heterosexual – straight – line. For women, it seems desirable both to distance themselves from a certain type of masculinity and femininity and thereby follow alternative – queer – lines.