If not negotiation, then what? Gender equality and the organization of everyday life in Swedish couples

Abstract

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.

Gendered debt – a scoping study review of research on debt acquisition and management in single and couple households

“…(Nyman, 1999, p. 773). Evertsson and Nyman (2009) conclude that, despite claims of equal relationships, the participants in their interview study still organised themselves in gender-stereotypic ways, with the women being responsible for the housework and child-related issues and the men for house maintenance and cars. The couples explained that their particular styles of organisation resulted from their interests and competences.…”

“…Several articles argue that culture, ideology and discursive images of the male breadwinner and the female homemaker are hidden power factors that affect the economic household management (Evertsson & Nyman, 2009;Nyman, 1999;Roman & Vogler, 1999;Sonnenberg, 2008;Vogler & Pahl, 1993). The male breadwinner/female homemaker dichotomy is evident on the household level, e.g.…”

“…The discursive images of male and female financial behaviours are established as women and men 'do gender' and 'do couple' in highly automatic manners, acting in accordance with gender-stereotypic expectations (Evertsson & Nyman, 2009). A quote from a woman who participated in Nyman's (1999) study illustrates how altruistic expectations become embedded in the female subject.…”

Becoming “Us”: Marital Name, Gender, and Agentic Work in Transition to Marriage

“…As a method of data collection, couple interviews are far less common than individual interviews (see, e.g., Evertsson & Nyman, 2009;Gabb & Fink, 2015;Pahl, 1989). Joint interviews permit and encourage partners to portray themselves as a couple (Bennett & McAvity, 1985), and they bring out couple interaction.…”

‘Little children are not for dad's?’ Challenging and undoing hegemonic masculinity

“…A great deal of research treats it as being similar to interaction (cf. Evertsson & Nyman, 2009), reflexive conversations and, in some cases, conflicts (cf. Brandth & Kvande, 1998;Meuser, 2014).…”