ork in the public sector has been changing dramatically in recent decades. Reforms aimed at increasing the efficiency of public services have been extensive in the Nordic countries and elsewhere since the 1980s. The reforms and changes have to a large extent been associated with so-called New Public Management (NPM) principles, emphasizing the market as a central coordination mechanism. Consequently, public institutions have been restructured, their services are standardized and commodified, and market-like relationships between them have been created. In order to create markets and transform citizens into customers on a market, outsourcing and privatization have been stimulated (

For both women and men, the gender composition of the occupation they work in seems to be of importance for their future labour market attachment and sickness absence or receipt of a disability pension.

Working life research does not have clear boundaries; however its focus is quite clear: Changes in working life and how these changes affect qualifications, health, occupations, innovation, the economy, identity, social orientation and culture. The density of working life research is quite high in the Nordic countries, and this research has always been involved in the development of the Nordic welfare societies in which the development of work has been one important factor. In this article working life research is presented in its historical contexts, emphasizing the welfare challenges to which the research has been related. The challenges and tensions related to the research are not presented as being simply internal to the research work, they also reflect challenges and tensions in working life and institutions that are supposed to support working life. Current controversies in working life research in the four Nordic countries will briefly be presented, and institutional challenges for the research in the four countries will be exemplified. Finally, the aims of the journal will be outlined.

▪ Equal opportunities has constituted one of the four pillars of the European Employment Strategy (EES) as approved at the Luxembourg summit in 1997. However, there are tensions between the EES and the imperatives of budgetary restraint (which have caused job losses in public services, where women are disproportionately employed) and between quantitative targets of increasing women's labour-force participation and qualitative targets of overcoming gender segregation. This article explores these tensions, drawing evidence from comparative European research and the particular experience of Sweden.

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