In the spring of 2020, the COVID‐19 outbreak and governmental lockdowns changed the everyday lives of families with children worldwide. Due to remote work recommendations and the closing of school premises and childcare centers, work–family boundaries became blurred in many families. In this study, we examine the possibly gendered boundary work practices among Finnish parents during the COVID‐19 lockdown in spring 2020 by asking, how do parents perceive the blurring of work–family boundaries? What kind of boundary work practices did families develop to manage their work and family roles, and were these practices gendered and how? Boundary practices are analyzed by combining theories of doing boundaries and gender theories in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic and applying them to survey data. The results revealed that during lockdown, both spatial and temporal boundaries blurred or partly disappeared, and boundary practices developed by families were highly gendered. Especially in families where childcare practices had been gendered already before the lockdown, it was predominantly mothers, who shouldered the main responsibility of increased childcare and struggled to manage their work duties. Hence, families had varying means to cope with blurring boundaries based on their ability to switch to remote work, but also on their work–family practices before the pandemic.

This article investigates how intersectionalities are handled in the orientations and positions of organization members when conducting feminist action research in workplaces. The Finnish Defence Forces are used as an empirical example of a hierarchical and gendered organization. The article employs the work conference method based on democratic dialogue with the aim of bringing together the divergent experiences and perspectives of the organization's members. Our interpretation is that the intersectional application of the work conference method reveals issues that would not have otherwise arisen. The method helps to highlight the habits and routines that are taken for granted in organizations. We suggest the use of the method both for identifying patterns of inequalities and for seeking remedies for them. The experiences gained from the empirical study support a multi‐method approach to action research. A more theory‐based consciousness of social positions and their interconnections will serve the development process. As a result, action research efforts might also become better anchored in organizational structures and practices.

KEY WORDSinformal practices of inequality / recruitment and selection / gender / age / ethnicity

The Finnish Defence Forces (FDF) have, in accordance with other public sector organizations in the Nordic countries, undergone many change processes in this millennium. Changes in the FDF have been related to government savings and more recently the fluctuating security environment. The purpose of the study is to show how these change processes have meant somewhat different things to men and women in the FDF, and these differences have an intersectional character. In order to explain, how potent experienced changes are in explaining the concerns of the personnel, and how they possibly interact with gender, age and personnel group, we analyzed survey data by using logistic regression. The survey was addressed to all salaried personnel of the FDF in 2015. The analysis showed that the logic of the examined, personally experienced, organizational changes deepened divisions produced by civil/military and gender hierarchies.

The organization of working times and workplaces has typically been diverse and hybrid for people working in culture. Work is characterized by precarious conditions such as short-term contracts and seasonal employment. The impact of COVID-19 has shown the vulnerability and uniqueness of the employment conditions in this sector. We collected personal written texts from people working in the cultural sector in spring 2020, when in Finland the first wave of COVID-19 was subsiding and nobody knew when the next wave would come. We analyzed the ways cultural workers constructed agency on temporal and relational dimensions as regards work and non-work. The content analytic approach highlighted two main types of situational agencies, the normative employment agency and the precarious work agency, both of which were shaped by the uncertain conditions of the cultural sector. Due to the differing employment conditions, both intensification of work and small agency were present in work of the cultural sector and posed challenges to the management of time and the future. However, the terms and conditions for agency construction varied, even under similar circumstances.

Purpose – Addressing the challenges expressed by organization researchers and Leslie McCall with her conceptual framework of intercategorical analysis, this paper contributes to the methodological debate on intersectionality. The purpose of this paper is to explore intersectionality on the organizational level in the Finnish defence forces (FDF). In the paper, the authors explore how the interactions between categories of gender, age, and position in the organization explain the concerns of employees in the changing military organization. Furthermore, the authors also investigate the types of intersectional mechanisms behind the empirical observations. Design/methodology/approach – The logistic regression analysis is based on a survey addressed to the whole salaried personnel in the FDF in 2011 (n=8,093, response rate being 54 per cent). Findings – In line with McCall’s (2005) intercategorical approach, the analysis shows that the plain examination of main effects of the variables will not suffice, but the interaction effects of the variables must also be examined. The analysis indicates that even though women in general experienced more concerns, gender does not alone explain the concerns expressed by the members of the FDF, but age and especially personnel group are significant in understanding configurations of positions in relation to the organizational change process. Research limitations/implications – The methodological limitation of the study is that although the data were large, it was not possible to conduct three-ways analysis, because of the size of some groups. Originality/value – The study offers a noteworthy addition to the rare research of practising intersectionality in the conceptual framework using quantitative methods.

Keväällä 2020 monen lapsiperheen arki mullistui covid-19-pandemian seurauksena, kun valtaosa lapsista siirtyi kotihoitoon tai etäopetukseen. Lisäksi moni vanhempi siirtyi etätöihin. Tarkastelimme tutkimuksessamme suomalaisten äitien kokemuksia työ- ja perhe-elämän yhteensovittamisesta boundary-teorian näkökulmasta korona-arjessa. Aineistona käytimme keväällä 2020 kerättyä kyselyä lapsiperheiden kokemuksista korona-arjessa. Kysely sisälsi kvantitatiivisia kysymyksiä ja kvalitatiivisia avokysymyksiä. Analyysin toteutimme monimenetelmällisesti. Tulokset osoittivat, että valtaosa äideistä koki korona-arjen hämärtäneen työn ja perheen välistä rajapintaa. Rajapintojen hallinnan strategioissa korostuikin työ- ja perheroolien rajojen rikkoutuminen eli korona-arki hämärsi sekä tilalliset että ajalliset rajat. Äidit erosivat toisistaan siinä, millaisia strategioita heillä oli käytettävissään työn ja perheen välisten rajojen hallintaan. Eroja aiheuttivat niin työnteon paikka kuin perheessä neuvotellut käytännöt lisääntyneen hoivavastuun jakamisesta.

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