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Since the 1980s, practically all of the western welfare states have developed social policies, which aim at shifting the responsibilities for welfare services from the state to the family, the civil society or to the market. In Sweden, this political transformation has particularly hit the public eldercare. In the last twenty years, the percentage of the population 65 years and older receiving public home help services in Sweden has decreased from 23 to 8 per cent at the same time as the number of beds in hospitalized eldercare has been heavily reduced. Moreover, during the course of the 2000s, the majority of the Swedish municipalities have reintroduced means testing of the eldercare based on whether the elderly have relatives or not that can perform the services. Parallel with these downsizes in the publicly financed and organized eldercare; privately produced eldercare services have increased, carried out by large and internationally own business corporations. Based on an theoretical framework, which combines the historical approach within the neo-institutional research tradition with a discursive method of analysis, this thesis explores if the period from the 1980s and onwards has been a formative moment in Swedish eldercare during which new ideas have become embedded in the institutional frameworks regulating the division of responsibility for eldercare services between the state, the family and the market. To examine if and how the municipalities, which are principally responsible for organizing and financing the public eldercare in Sweden, have implemented the change in ideas that have emerged in national politics since the 1980s, the thesis also examines how the eldercare has developed in two of Sweden's municipalities since the 1980s. The results of the thesis demonstrates that the period from the 1980s and onwards has been a formative moment in the Swedish eldercare during which new ideas regarding the public responsibility for eldercare service have emerged and become institutionalized. Since the 1980s, senior citizens' need for care has increasingly been re-interpreted from a public to a private issue with the consequence that today, their need for certain services, in particular those related to housework, are no longer regarded to be a public responsibility but a private matter that the elderly will have to solve, either by buying the services on the market, or, by asking relatives for help and assistance. The main problem connected with this reprivatization of senior citizens' need for care is, however, that as the state has withdrawn its responsibility, women, in their role of being wives, daughters, or daughters-in-laws, have been forced to step in as informal and unpaid providers of care. Therefore, regardless of political reigns and modes of production, women have been forced to taken on an increasingly larger responsibility for their elderly relatives.

AbstractSocial services in the welfare sector consist of women‐dominated jobs generally characterised by arduous working conditions, including exposure to client violence. Although there is a rather extensive research base on client violence in institutional social services, less is known about how client violence is handled in noninstitutional social services. Using longitudinal data obtained from the Swedish Work Environment Agency's register on work injuries caused by workplace violence, we examined the effects of organisational factors and employee characteristics on the reporting of client violence in noninstitutional social services. We found that most of the reports about work injuries caused by client violence are filed by public employers and that most reports concern occupational groups performing direct care services in clients' homes. Moreover, although most reports include female employees and incidents of physical violence, reports concerning male employees are comparatively more likely to include physical violence, and reports concerning female employees are comparatively more likely to include threats. Taken together, our findings point to a much‐needed improvement of health and safety measures for care workers in noninstitutional social services in Sweden.

Focusing on Swedish home care for older people, this article explores the discursive (re)production of home care as an institution. Equality and universal service provision have been described as defining features of the Nordic care regime. At the same time, Nordic research has highlighted a shift in social care policy, from a focus on universalism and egalitarian ideals towards a focus on freedom of choice, diversity and individualised services. This article takes as a starting point that home care for older people is formed by different and potentially conflicting ideas. We understand home care as a contested formation and define institutional change in terms of ongoing discursive struggles. The analysis draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews with key informants, including politicians, local authority officials and representatives of interest organisations. Informants were engaged in policy making, implementation or advocacy related to care for older people. We examine the meanings attached to home care for older people and the analysis reveals three different discourses – on choice, needs and equality. By comparing and contrasting discourses, we reveal silences, conflicts and tensions, and highlight the politics involved in (re)creating home care as an institution.

Chapter 1. On equal terms? Gendering labour markets, the organisation of work and the wellbeing of employees (Britt-Inger Keisu, Helen Brodin and Susanne Tafvelin) -- Part I: Working Conditions -- Chapter 2. Classification of work– an approach for the exploration, understanding and prevention of gender differences in working conditions (Annika Härenstam and Anna Nyberg) -- Chapter 3. Psychosocial working conditions for women and men in industries with different types of production and gender composition: Sweden, 1991-2017 (Anna Nyberg, Annika Härenstam, Gun Johansson, Paraskevi Peristera) -- Chapter 4. A Multilevel Approach to Understanding Job Demands and Resources in Health Care (Anne Richter, Marta Roczniewska, Henna Hasson & Ulrica von Thiele Schwarz) -- Chapter 5. Managing Care Work in Times of Austerity – Gendered Working Conditions for Managers (Klara Regnö) -- Part II: Organisation of Work -- Chapter 6. Invisible workers – on digitalisation in home care work from a gender and technology perspective (Charlotte Holgersson and Britt Östlund) -- Chapter 7. Organising auditing, person centered care and competence in Swedish residential care homes (Palle Storm & Anneli Stranz) -- Chapter 8. Gender differences in the impact of work hours on health and well-being (Philip Tucker) -- Chapter 9. The interplay between gendered norms and new public management strategies in the shaping of homecare services' work environments (Annika Vänje) -- Part III: Violence and Conflicts -- Chapter 10. 'Don´t let it get to you.' Gendering workplace violence in disability services in Sweden (Helene Brodin and Sara Erlandsson) -- Chapter 11. The concept of intragroup conflict in relation to gender and wellbeing in women-dominated work (Britt-Inger Keisu and Susanne Tafvelin) -- Index.