Förståelse, bedömningar och hjälpinsatser : Socialarbetares arbete med män som våldsoffer

This report outlines the background to, and presents the results from the Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority funded project "Social Workers' understanding of men as victims of crime". The project aimed at describing and analyzing how social workers understand and work with male victims of violence. More precisely, the research has focused on how social workers describe men's vulnerability and how they understand men's needs for assistance, what assistance that is provided and the way the constellations of perpetrators and victims of different gender and contexts in which the violence occurs in affect the understanding of male victims of violence. The study has also been devoted to the question of whether the Support Centers for young crime victims in Sweden provide different types of and different amount of help to young men and women afflicted of violence. The project was conducted in three substudies. The results from substudy 1 show that more young men than women seek support from the Support centers studied. Men predominate in number of cases and in the different categories of crime. The results also show that young men on average receive less assistance over a shorter average duration than young women. This applies irrespective of the category of offense that the vulnerability applies to. Furthermore, the young men, compared to the women, proportionally receive fewer interventions characterized as support and a greater proportion of interventions in the form of information. The results also show that the young men are referred on for further action to a lesser extent than is the case for women. The results from substudy 2 show that social workers tend to focus on whether, and to what extent, young men who are victims of violence themselves have behaved provocatively before the violence incident and if they have put themselves in a social situation that could be interpreted as having contributed to an escalation of the violence they have been subjected to. The results from substudy 2 also show that social workers talk about the men as active in the violent situations they have been involved in and dwell on the extent to which the young men's own actions have contributed to the violence. The results also show that young men who are victims of violence are described as "reluctant" victims who are trying to cope with their situation on their own without the involvement of professional or other helper. The young men are also described as reluctant to talk about their feelings. The results of substudy 3 show that social workers believe that young men, when they become victims of violence, risks losing their sense of autonomy, initiative and decisiveness, that is, attributes that are often linked to the dominating cultural image of masculinity. Furthermore, the results show that social workers estimate that men's practicing of their masculinity, but also the response that men who are traumatized get from society, creates difficulties for them to get help. The results from substudy 3 also shows that attributes and actions that can be connected to the masculinity of young men's, as well as a lack of such attributes and actions are considered to be adequate explanations for the violence the men has suffered. When it comes to violence in public places it is the masculinity that explains the violence and its escalation. When it comes to domestic violence it is the lack of expected male attributes and actions that are used as explanations for the violence that have occurred. The discussion is devoted to the question of how the results should be understood based on the concepts of self-performance, interpretation, negotiation and categorizations, and the consequences the results obtained should have for gender sensitive social work given to abused men.

"Men shit, hur fan har vi kunnat glömma bort det?" : Falu kommuns socialtjänsts arbete gällande prostitution

The purpose of this study was to examine whether and how the social services in the municipality of Falun is managing social work related to prostitution. It is a qualitative study based on three focus group interviews conducted in parts of the social services organization in the municipality of Falun. The empirical data collected was analyzed from an intersectional perspective. Several distinct findings emerged from the study. Social work against prostitution does not exist in the social services organization in the municipality of Falun. The organization possesses no procedures or guidelines for this kind of work, and no preventive work or cooperation with other organizations is carried out. It also emerged, that several social work officers had a stereotype image of who a potential sex- seller could be. This fact may influence who would be able to get any support from social services regarding to this social problem.

There is something about Mary… and Ted! : Training in mixed-sex groups makes you work harder. A study about the effort when training with the opposite sex.

In many sport associations, regardless of level, women and men rarely practice together. Previous studies indicate that work groups are generally more efficient when there is an even distribution between the sexes. Could that also be the case in sports? This study aims to investigate whether the sex composition of a training group affects the effort and performance of the participants. Eleven volunteers participated in the crossover study consisting of three different 150-meter sprint conditions; individually, single-sex group and mixed-sex group. Sprint times, heart rate and RPE were recorded during all three trials. The result of this study suggests that there might be practical benefits in regards to physical performance and effort to exercise in a training group consisting of both sexes instead of training only with the same-sex or individually. The understanding could be useful in areas such as; training optimisation for both athletes and in patient- and rehabilitation groups, increasing efficiency in work environments, in schools and sports clubs striving for both athletic success and gender equality.