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.