Postfeminism as Coping Strategy : Understandings of Gender and Intragroup Conflict among Swedish Welfare Workers

• This paper explores how workers in the women-dominated public sectorin Sweden speak about and make sense of gender and intragroup conflictand the consequences of this way of thinking and acting for genderequality at work. Using qualitative interviews with 26 first-level managersand employees, we introduce an analytical framework that employs criticaldiscourse psychology and the conceptualization of a postfeministsensibility at work. We identified three competing meanings (postfeministstorylines) of gender and intragroup conflict: Supporting the genderedmeanings of conflict, Unawareness of conflict’s gendered meanings andCounteracting the gendered meanings of conflict. The welfare workersacknowledged the role of gender in intragroup conflicts but, paradoxically,constructed their own workplaces as gender neutral, withoutinequalities related to gender. We interpret these three postfeminist storylinesas coping strategies; that is, as ways to make sense of the falsepromise of gender egalitarianism that characterizes the Swedish labourmarket.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Genusstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Gender Studies (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Arbetslivsstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Work Sciences (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Postfeminism; women dominated work; welfare workers; intragroup conflict; gender equality; critical discursive psychology

Sociology

sociologi

genusvetenskap

gender studies

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)