Gendered Activation at the Expense of Gender Equality? Activation and Gender Equality as Competing Logics in the Swedish Welfare State

Abstract

This study aims to understand how goals of activation and gender equality interact in labor market programs directed towards activating unemployed participants. The study draws on interviews with 28 social workers and managers at four Swedish municipally governed labor market programs typically targeted towards poor, unemployed individuals with little to no attachment to the labor market or social insurance system. Our findings show that activation goals are understood to be clear cut and a dominant logic within the labor market programs. The gender equality goals are understood as fuzzy and subordinate to the activation logic. Our theoretical analysis, based on neo-institutional theory, shows that gendered activation as a hybrid logic is created within the four programs as a means of handling the competing logics of gender equality and activation. Gendered activation may be reasonable on an individual level, where women in long-term unemployment can sustain a higher income through work and become financially independent. In the context of the gender segregated labor market, gendered activation reproduces gendered inequalities when an increasing interest for activation policy among welfare states overshadows claims of gender equality. Furthermore, our study exemplifies the systemic reproduction of racist discourse within social- and labour market policies. Within the logic of gendered activation, migrant women become singled out as specifically problematic for Swedish society to handle when unemployment is given gendered and cultural explanations. Through the logic of gendered activation, gender equality goals become no-matter-what employment rather than employment leading to equal outcomes.

Crumbs from the Rich Man's Table?: Municipal Labour Market Policies and Recognition of Welfare Recipients in Sweden

“…In the process of this study, I have also become curious about the role of dimensions of inequality such as gender and ethnicity in activation. Other scholars acknowledge the need for attention to such issues in activation research (Parsland & Ulmestig 2022;Söderqvist Forkby 2022). While categorising individuals inevitably risks reproducing stereotypes and power orders, it nonetheless assists identifying and studying inequality (Laanemets et al 2013).…”