No abstract

The Swedish welfare state has, during the twentieth century, developed into the primary guarantor of health and social services as well as economic security. As the welfare state has developed, a new group of professions has emerged which can be described as welfare state professions. In this paper I will point out a few central aspects of how female-dominated welfare state professions have emerged and developed within the framework of the Swedish welfare state's expansion. These ideas will then be demonstrated on two female-dominated occupations, nurses and occupational therapists, which have developed in close association with the expansion of the welfare state.The results indicate that the emergence of a centrally planned welfare state and the occupational groups' organizational resources have been of crucial importance for the professional development of female-dominated health and care occupations in Sweden. The welfare state has opened up new professional fields and created a stable labour market, which has provided good conditions for professional organizing. The state has also been quick to establish relationships with occupational groups whose professional competence has been deemed to be suited to the welfare political context. However, the state's interests in professional matters have often been in conflict with those of the professions themselves, regarding, for example, education, sub-specialization and certification. One conclusion that can be drawn is that the Swedish welfare state has acted both as an engine and a brake regarding professional development and status.

This article presents a description and analysis of the written narratives of problematic situations given by social workers and general practitioners (GPs) within the framework of the sociology of professions and organisations. The narratives were collected from 28 social workers and 24 GPs, working in several Swedish counties.Findings: Our findings show that the professionals rarely described lack of knowledge or difficulties choosing the right intervention or treatment as problematic. Rather, the problematic situations contained encounters with clients perceived as disruptive to professional routine practice. We conclude that there were three different types of problematic situations where the professional routine practice was disrupted:(1) Situations related to 'client-making work', where the professionals perceived it difficult to, e.g., gather enough information about the client to make a diagnosis, set a timetable or decide on adequate interventions; (2) Situations related to 'wicked work', where the professionals experienced clients unable to articulate their problems or understand and follow the interventions suggested by the professionals; (3) Situations related to 'dirty work' were only present in GPs' narratives and typically occurred when GPs perceived that they were dealing with clients who endangered their professional status.

Freed from the bonds of traditional gendered norms, responsibilities and obligations, it has been argued that negotiation is a key concept for understanding how modern couples organize their common life together. Interviews with Swedish couples cause us to question this assumption. In this article we argue that negotiations are relatively unusual in couple relationships. We found that couples seldom experience the reason, room space or need to negotiate. This can in part be understood from the perspective of seeing everyday life as a matter of practical coordination, i.e. as something we strive to master rather than something we try to change or critically reflect upon. We found that routines and rituals were a guiding force in how couples organize their everyday lives. "Doing gender", "doing couple", external circumstances and agreement were all central aspects in making the everyday lives of the couples we interviewed work.

EVERTSSON L and LINDQVIST R. Nursing Inquiry 2005; 12: 256-268 Welfare state and women's work: the professional projects of nurses and occupational therapists in Sweden In this article we explore how Swedish welfare politics within health-care and rehabilitation has opened up a space for nurses' and occupational therapists' professional projects. Using historical data, an analysis of the policy-making process behind welfare programs central to the professionalization of nursing and occupational therapy is presented. The time period covered is, in the case of nurses, the larger part of the twentieth century, while the modern history of occupational therapists first began in the 1940s. Special emphasis is placed on the corporative nature of the Swedish welfare state and the professional strategies utilized by nurses and occupational therapists in their struggle for jurisdiction. In the article, politicization is identified as a core strategy by which female-dominated welfare state occupations in Sweden have tried to gain influence over the welfare policy-making process and their occupations' jurisdiction.