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Young peopleʼs access to credit has increased over recent decades in line with financial deregulation and the digitalization of loan provision. This calls for a research approach that takes contextual features into consideration. Inspired by a life-course perspective and based on interviews with young people and debt advisors in Norway, we propose that ways both into and out of youth debt may be conceived as contextualized biographical processes. We suggest that ways into debt are characterized by three types of contextual factors: obligations, temptations, and expectations, while ways out are marked by three stages; realizing, sharing, and waiting. In addition, youth debt appears to be related to classed shame associated with financial mismanagement, and to normative and gendered milestones in transitions to adulthood.

The pursuit of diverse formats and content in children’s literature is an ever-expanding effort aimed at better serving the diverse spectrum of children in learning environments. Multisensory learning, especially in the context of multisensory reading, offers substantial potential to enrich the learning experiences of diverse children. Concurrently, gender emerges as a significant variable influencing multisensory engagement. When examining children’s literature, we delve into the importance of its content and the need for diverse representation. This scoping review focuses on gender as a central reference point and systematically explores the existing literature concerning multisensory texts (n = 5), gender-diverse texts (n = 26) and their intersection. Through both quantitative and qualitative reporting, this review provides a comprehensive overview of the characteristics and emerging themes within the included studies, which investigate the concepts of gender, multisensory reading and texts, and gender-diverse texts in early childhood education and care (ECEC) and school settings published between 2000 and 2023.

Finnish marital surnaming practices give precedence to the husband’s surname as the family name after marriage. Legislation treats partners symmetrically and offers alternatives, but a patriarchal mindset still has a hold on the transition to a family. This article analyses interviews of 19 mixed-sex wedding couples and focuses on how they resort to humour in discussing alternatives to patrilineal practice. Literature shows that humour plays an important role in maintaining and regulating close relationships, but it can also be used as an indirect way to dismiss partners’ concerns. The results of this exploratory and descriptive analysis of couple interviews highlight different ways in which humour is used when discussing the potentially sensitive matter of marital surnaming.

Name changing is an under-researched topic in socio-onomastics. In this article, we extend knowledge of and understanding about gender and name changing by analysing ‘enrolled deed polls’, which people in the United Kingdom can use to change any part or all parts of their names. We examine which names are changed in relation to gender, including those we linked to transitions in gender identity. Our quantitative analyses of 10 665 enrolled deed polls for the period 1998–2019 shows that, over time, women have replaced men as the majority of applicants for name change and that, compared to men, women are more likely to make ‘surname only’ changes to their name. Among men applicants, there was an increase over time in changes made to first and middle names (a doubled figure in 2019 compared to 1998). Although case numbers are small, of the name changes we attributed to gender transition, the majority were changes made to the applicant’s first name and/or middle name. Our article concludes by reflecting on what our analysis of otherwise unexamined records of enrolled deed polls reveals about the (re)doing of gender identities through name changing in contemporary societies.

Until recently, little attention has been given to men’s surname choices in couples. By analysing men’s narratives, this study investigates the motivations and social implications of their choices. Drawing on historical and sociocultural perspectives, it demonstrates how men’s names are privileged in Norwegian culture compared to women’s names despite a high degree of gender equality. Men who break the norms want to make their own decisions. Overall, this research contributes to the broader discourse on gender equality by highlighting the transformative potential of seemingly small acts, such as name choices. It also contributes to socio-onomastics by highlighting surname choice as a meaningful and gendered activity.

Artikkelen tar opp spørsmål om makt og demokrati i Norge fra et kjønnsperspektiv tjue år etter den forrige Makt- og demokratiutredningen (NOU 2003: 19). Den er strukturert i en del som undersøker tilgang på makt der vi særlig konsentrerer oss om kjønnsskjevheter i eliteposisjoner, og påstanden i utredningen om at kjønnslikestilling har «vikeplikt» i det norske politiske systemet – og i en del om demokrati, der vi retter søkelyset mot forholdet mellom demokrati og internasjonal rettsliggjøring i et kjønnsperspektiv. Vi konkluderer med at selv om «likestillingslandet» Norge fortsatt er preget av kjønnsbestemte maktskjevheter, så er det et mindre dominerende trekk i dag enn for tjue år siden. Likestillingsdebatten er også blitt vesentlig endret og mer inkluderende og åpen for flerdimensjonale og interseksjonelle perspektiver og menns likestillingsutfordringer. Konsekvenser av internasjonal rettsliggjøring eksemplifiseres med EUs påvirkning på likestillingsfeltet, og vi drøfter de sammensatte konsekvensene. For Norges del, tyder mye på at utviklingen stadig fanges godt i bildet av en likestillingsutvikling som er «på vei», men bremses av at mål om likestilling ofte får vikeplikt og må tilpasses de maktkonstellasjoner som «er».

This article delves into the historical context of the second girls’ school committee in late-nineteenth-century Sweden, exploring aspects of gendered content and conduct in its formation and operations. Firstly, the study investigates the media representation of the committee’s inclusion of women and how it was framed for the public. Secondly, it examines the committee’s use of statistics in its 1888 report to advocate for a particular type of education for girls, based on notions of their “female nature.” By adopting a feminist approach to historical writing, the article aims to shed light on the committee’s significance in terms of breaking the male-dominated pattern of state decision-making. As a result, this article contributes to the field of gender and history of education by examining the groundbreaking inclusion of women in the girls’ school committee and the utilisation of statistics to shape educational policies in a society grappling with conflicting notions of female nature and women’s expanding roles in education and the workforce.

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between Old Norse feasts and gender. Following Michael Dietler’s claim that examinations of gender offer insights into the practices of feasts of a given culture and vice versa, I analyse two Old Norse myths that both depict the god Thor attending feasts hosted by giants. I argue that Old Norse feasts were domains where relations were regulated and maintained, and where everyday norms were transgressed in order to strengthen and maintain society. In both myths, masculinities in particular are challenged and transformed. I apply gender theories by R. W. Connell and Judith Butler to analyse how transformations of masculinity provide insights into the established gender order of Old Norse society. DANSK RESUMÉ: Formålet med denne artikel er at undersøge forholdet mellem norrøne fester og køn. Inspireret af Michael Dietlers påstand om at studier af kønsforestillinger tilbyder indsigter i en given kulturs festpraksisser og omvendt, analyserer jeg to norrøne myter om guden Thor der indebærer hans deltagelse i jættefester. Jeg argumenterer for at norrøne fester var domæner hvor dominans blev reguleret og opretholdt, og hvor hverdagens normer blev overskredet for at styrke og opretholde samfundet. I begge myter bliver især maskuliniteter udfordret og transformeret ved festerne. Jeg anvender kønsteorier af R. W. Connell og Judith Butler i min analyse af hvordan transformationer af maskulinitet tilbyder indsigt i den etablerede kønsorden i det norrøne samfund.

Abstract Single mothers with a foreign background and their children are a growing group within the homelessness population in Sweden. However, they are also more likely to live in “hidden homelessness” than other groups and are therefore less visible in official counts, a factor that contributes to misrepresentation and misrecognition of their living circumstances. In recent years, this invisibility has been exacerbated through new guidelines that delimit target groups, including families with children, and put stronger emphasis on the individual’s responsibility to solve their own housing situation regardless of structural constraints. This article outlines the experience and impact of those changes as articulated by single mothers affected by homelessness and housing exclusion in the greater region of Stockholm. The findings presented show aspects of experiences of homelessness and encounters with social services that tend to be invisible in official accounts in Sweden. They further illustrate the difficulties and harmful impact on vulnerable women and children of a system that primarily focuses on exit and individual deficiencies.

Sammendrag Statistisk sett utgjør kvinner et mindretall blant registrerte bostedsløse. Nyere norske kartlegginger viser imidlertid at andelen kvinnelige bostedsløse er økende, samtidig som internasjonale studier peker mot at omfanget må regnes som større enn det vi klarer å fange opp gjennom tradisjonelle kartleggingsmetoder. Denne artikkelen fokuserer på bostedsproblematikk for individer som har vært utsatt for vold og overgrep i nære relasjoner, og tar utgangspunkt i nasjonale kartleggingers diskusjoner av bostedsløshet blant kvinner og voldsutsatte. Artikkelen har som mål å synliggjøre hvordan et tydeligere kjønnsperspektiv kan berike vår forståelse av sammenhengen mellom vold i nære relasjoner og bostedsløshet. Diskusjonen som følger har implikasjoner utover de empiriske eksemplene som gis, og skriver seg inn i mer omfattende diskurser om likebehandling og tiltaksutvikling.

Copyright of Arbetsmarknad & Arbetsliv is the property of Karlstads universitet, Arbetsvetenskap and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article investigates the practices of naming and describing bodies in plus-size women’s fashion blogs. Building on Jeffries’ (2007) work on the construction of bodies and bodily processes in women’s magazines, I explore how bloggers use language to construct their identities through references to bodily characteristics. I investigate terms the bloggers use to describe the plus-size body, as well as the connotative features of these terms. In addition, I analyse the use of three terms that were used to describe bodies that are not plus-size: thin, slim, and skinny. The results demonstrate that, while the bloggers build counter-discourse to the mainstream media discourses that construct fatness as a negative characteristic, they also maintain particular hegemonic discourses on beauty, sexuality and gender.

The Old Indian fable collection Panchatantra was first introduced to the Greco-Roman world in the eleventh century via Middle Persian and Arabic translations, under the Greek title Stephanites and Ichnelates. The first Greek version continued to be translated into various other languages over the centuries, from the thirteenth-century Old Slavonic Stefanid and Ihnilat, translated into modern Serbian as Stefanit and Ihnilat (1999). The extended second medieval Greek version had a myriad of translations as well, the most recent being the English 2022 edition of Animal Fables of the Courtly Mediterranean. Several translators over centuries navigated the ‘untranslatability’ of characters’ gender in this text, on the intersection of grammatical, social and ‘natural’ categories. Our inquiry raises questions of social and grammatical gender, across times and spaces, examining how human gender constructs are materialized in animal characters and narrated in diversely gendered languages. Querying the linguistic differences of gender, we compare stories of selected characters from three different fables in Greek, English, Old Slavonic, and Serbian versions, while also looking at the Arabic source text Kalila and Dimnah. In the case of the lion’s mother, translations avoid using a word for female lion while emphasizing her role as queen-dowager and mother at the cost of her animality. The story of the owls introduces different grammatical genders for the birds outside of the court, while the individual owl-ministers and their king have to be male. The most curious case is that of two turtles whose gender roles are firmly assigned in Arabic but become so fluid in Greek and Old Slavonic that the animals change gender mid-sentence. While the stories highlight historically contingent gender performativity, the fact that the modern translators impose stable gender and heterosexuality upon their characters, opens up the space for debate on (mis)interpretatinons of animal sexuality and the queering and worldmaking potential of translation.

This article focuses on translation, gender, and cultural legitimacy. Some studies touching on these topics have been carried out previously, but few have analyzed how translated novels are paratextually designed for marketing purposes. I aim to bridge this research gap by focusing on review excerpts presented on the covers of novels translated into Swedish. More specifically, I investigate how different aspects of gender affect review excerpts. I draw upon Gino Cattani and colleagues’ (2014) three kinds of legitimacy that a cultural agent may grant to a cultural product. These are bourgeoislegitimacy (recognition from critics), popular legitimacy (recognition from the public), and specific legitimacy (recognition from peers). Methodologically, I use descriptive statistics to describe and analyze a corpus of 333 book covers of translated novels collected in a bookstore in Sweden. I categorize and quantify the review excerpts on the covers according to the three kinds of legitimacy and then discuss a few cases. The results show that review excerpts categorized as bourgeois legitimacy originating from the target culture dominate for both female and male authors. Review excerpts categorized as popular legitimacy are rare in the corpus, but a large majority of occurrences are used on the cover of books written by women. Specific legitimacy, on the other hand, is more widespread among the male authors.

The Oscar-winning Disney film Encanto (2021) was hailed for its authentic representation of Colombian culture, but it also sparked a discussion on film’s ability to capture aspects of a culture and even change the global image of a country. This essay does not attempt to evaluate the merit of Encanto as a conveyor of Colombian culture, but investigates the representation of the narrative mode, magic realism, as it is translated from Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude into Disney animation to be presented to a global audience. Based on the current notion of the feminine in modern animated Disney films, we explore how it may function paratextually to guide interpretation of the feminine connection with magic. Viewers of a Disney film in 2021 may have responded differently according to their cultural background and knowledge of languages, and in this case, their familiarity with Disney productions and/or with García Márquez’s literary universe. We examine how Norwegian reviewers received the film, particularly with regard to Disney conventions, such as magical elements, and the representation of female characters.

The topics of internationalization, international recruitment, and diversity have been increasingly emphasized in the agendas of Swedish universities. This study presents an overview of how Swedish universities’ teaching and research staff, with a special emphasis on national background and gender, were distributed within three job categories (career development positions, lecturerships, and professorships) and in two major fields of academic sciences in the time frame 2008–2018. We used data from Statistics Sweden to categorize groups of staff focusing on the origin of staff and the origin of their parents. We differentiated the findings by gender. The results show a large increase in the number and share of foreignborn (international) staff among career development positions and a smaller increase among lecturers and professors. The share of foreign-born staff in career development positions has markedly increased in both the hard and soft sciences. In contrast, the share of descendants of immigrants has remained quite low and stable in all the three job categories. The fact that the growth among foreign-born staff does not seem to be reflected in the composition of staff in permanent positions indicates a “contained diversity” where internationalization is strongly emphasized within non-permanent staff categories, whereas the composition in the most prestigious academic positions remains more homogeneous.

“The Perceptive Gaze. Theatricality in Rut Hillarp’s Blodförmörkelse” This paper provides an analytical study of the self-dramatization of the female subject in Rut Hillarp’s 1951 novel Blodförmörkelse (Blood Eclipse) with a focus on theatricality as the foundation of the woman’s relationship with the world around her. With her male counterpart as the muse – the idealized object – the woman is the creator and work of her own story, an actress on her own stage, and through her conscious staging of reality she reintroduces certain social constructs as arbitrary. Building on previous literature on the novel, the author examines the evolution of the woman’s sense of selfhood using Stanley Cavell's notion of theatricality and Adriana Caverero's theory of the narratable self. Furthermore, the woman's theatricalization of being itself, where being appears as an act of self-representation that must be recognized by the other, is explored. Finally, by discussing how this is expressed in relation to the woman’s perception of self and the other, the role of theatricality in the woman’s journey through the inner unknown to the interpersonal is illustrated. Forever the other, the woman becomes a stranger – even in relation to herself.

Around 2007, several self-proclaimed norm-critical publishing companies were established in Sweden. This caused a long debate in the daily press, where some critics compared the "norm-critical" books to propaganda. The debate indicates a conflict between an aesthetic and a didactic approach to children's literature. Another lively debate with similar critique took off when Kivi & Monsterhund (Kivi and Monsterdog, 2012) by Jesper Lundqvist and Bettina Johansson was published - a picturebook where the protagonist is referred to by a gender-neutral prounoun. The purpose of this article is to problematise the prevailing view on self-proclaimed normcritical children's literature and its didactic relationship to the reader. The reception, the paratexts, and the book itself are analysed using Torben Weinreich's and Clémentine Beauvais' different definitions of didactics, Gérard Genette's view on pararatexts, Maria Nikolajeva's theories on picturebooks, and Judith Butler's view on gender as performative. The book, and its didactic relationship to the reader, is found to be much more complex and conflicting than suggested by the reception and the paratexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Girls’ and boys’ play in the home corner and doll house: Gendered expectations and hierarchies in Swedish preschool in the middle of the 20th century. This article examines children’s play in a gender stereotypical framing: the home corner and dollhouses in mid-1900’s Swedish preschool. Three different types of empirical material were analysed: a preschool teachers’ questionnaire, observation protocols from children’s play with dollhouses and complementary photographs of playing preschool children. By examining these, we have been able to identify the preschool teacher’s gender stereotyped expectations of girls’ and boys’ play and how gender stereotyped expectations of children were maintained. The children especially helped to uphold a dichotomy between girls’ and boys’ play. This dichotomy was confirmed by the fact that girls had a hierarchically superior role in the game when both girls and boys participated. Boys, on the other hand, had more space for action in the gender-stereotypically framed play, as they were not bound by play conventions in the same way as girls. Boys’ attempts at nurturing play with dolls, i.e. more femininely coded play, was disparaged by educators and other children.

In this essay, I draw on the lyrics of a viral song by Shervin Hajipour titled “Baraye” (meaning: for the sake of) that was released on 28 September 2022 and immediately became the anthem of the protests in Iran. I quote excerpts of the lyrics in three sections of this essay, connecting them to the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” chanted in the streets and the symbolic act of cutting one’s hair that has come to represent the protests. In the first of these sections, on woman, I reflect on the regime’s gender politics (of hair), arguing that the act of cutting one’s hair becomes a symbolic act of resisting such gender politics. In the second section, on life, I focus on the act of cutting hair as a mode of mourning the unjust and untimely deaths, for which accountability is demanded. In the last section, on freedom, I focus on the sexual politics of hair and the politics of the veil. I argue that cutting one’s hair is a symbolic act of resisting modes of sexualization that are used by the regime to justify mandatory hijab. Putting together the three parts – woman, life, freedom – I conclude that cutting one’s hair is a feminist act of resistance, an exercise of agency through which Iranian women are taking control and reclaiming their womanhood, their lives, their bodies and their freedom of choice.

Several Danish museums have worked with inclusion in the past 10 years in order to create more diverse representations. However, these initiatives are often short term and fail to facilitate institutional change in the long run. If we instead of working with inclusion begin to focus on the mechanisms of exclusion, the museums (and the researchers working with them) might be able to facilitate the wanted transformation. When we begin to understand how mechanisms of exclusion can take place even among those with egalitarian ideals, we do not only begin to understand why there was a need to include in the first place – we might also be able to better understand the changes that we see in current times: With MeToo and BlackLivesMatter, there has undeniably been a change in public discourse and the changes can be tracked to focus of the Danish museums’ exhibitions. This change can potentially also be explained when working with the concept of uintentional exclusion - or rather; by looking at the potential responses to uintentional exclusion found in the small, daily actions performed at a museum.

In 1978, Sweden’s oldest women’s organisation, the Fredrika Bremer Association (FBF), organised an event on women and technology. This was the first event of its kind in Sweden and it was met with great interest. Consequently, it became a recurring annual event until the late 1990s. At a time when the computerisation of society precipitated a response from the Swedish state, labour market parties and civil society, the FBF became an authority in the area of technology and gender equality. Framed within the field of history of knowledge, this article claims that the FBF sought to redefine the concept of technology to include what they considered to be female features. They circulated this new definition in the school system and among the broader society. The FBF has been overlooked as a relevant actor in the circulation of technology knowledge, even though it played a significant role in the discussion of women and computer technology in Sweden from the late 1970s to the late 1990s.

Denmark underwent major changes in the 1800s and the first part of the 1900s, which affected the role of education in the lives of women. Until then, women in Denmark had primarily worked as homemakers with few academic opportunities; but from the early 1900s, home economics developed as a field of knowledge, and several schools of home economics appeared across the country. Several factors contributed to and influenced this development. Focusing on the period 1890–1940, which was particularly important to the development of this knowledge field in Denmark, we consider the interests promoting the growth of this field of knowledge, its educational content, and the contradictory meaning it had for the social status of women. On the one hand, the development of home economics contributed to turning home duties into an educational and occupational area, preparing for a welfare state making the private sphere a public matter. On the other hand, it tied women to the private sphere and prevented their influence in the public sphere.

Murder, Mayhem, and the Moans of Dying Men: Fridtjuv Berg’s Trojanska kriget and The Iliad for Children Around the turn of the twentieth century, several retellings of Homer’s epic and Greek mythology were published for children in Sweden. Fridtjuv Berg’s Trojanska kriget (The Trojan War, 1901) in the canonical publication series Barnbiblioteket Saga (The Children’s Library Saga) became one of the most long-lived. This article examines the characteristics of Berg’s rewriting by an analysis of the organization of the narrative, paratextual features, and the depiction of gender. Berg’s strategies are compared with another contemporary rewriting of The Iliad, Kata Dalström’s Grekiska guda- och hjältesagor (Greek Tales of Gods and Heroes, 1893). The article shows that the two rewritings mainly depict the same events and in the same order. Trojanska kriget foregrounds the historical content of The Iliad in the paratexts and by structuring the narrative around the foundation and fall of Troy. Dalström’s paratexts stress the timelessness of the work by references to a long cultural tradition, which is reinforced by illustrations depicting artworks from different eras. Berg’s book is more richly and uniformly illustrated, and Louis Moe’s illustrations highlight the action of the tale. Furthermore, Berg and Dalström focus on different aspects when abridging the tales, which influences the depiction of gender. While both rewritings describe a patriarchal society, Berg puts greater emphasis on male relationships and heroism. The women are mainly described as passive victims of war or masculinist power structures. Dalström’s version contains a greater variety of women. The comparison makes clear that Berg’s greater interest in the historical and factual aspects of Homer’s epic may have contributed to a more conservative gender ideology. At the same time, the rapid action of Trojanska kriget together with the publication context in Barnbiblioteket Saga are probably two of the factors behind the book’s success.

This article explores the functions of secondary girl characters in English-language American and Canadian girls’ Bildungsromane. Previously, we have explored girls’ literature as a distinct genre, framed in the theory of genre as social action, and our past scholarship examines the ways in which pre-WWII girls’ Bildungsroman stories emphasize girls’ eventual integration into their communities. Rather than having adventures, as in boys’ coming-of-age texts, we have noted ways in which the main girl characters grow “down” into social restrictions, usually as (potential) wives and mothers. Secondary female characters in these girls’ stories are compared, contrasted, or conflated with their close peers as they grow to womanhood, whether they function as the protagonists' “bosom friend,” a rival or “frenemy,” a sibling, or a classmate. However, without the same coming-of-age expectations of a text’s or series’ heroine, these secondary female characters often demonstrate alternate paths to womanhood, highlighting diversities or serving as a warning to the girl protagonists on their journeys.

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I denne artikkelen diskuterer vi kjønnede framstillinger i medias dekning av fotball på Sørlandet ved å analysere de to største avisene Fædrelandsvennen og Agderposten sin dekning av fotballagene Amazon Grimstad (kvinnelag) og FK Jerv (herrelag). Det viser seg at dekningen er asymmetrisk på flere områder. Jerv blir framstilt som et lag med gode spillere, vakkert spill, gode resultater og som et sterkt kollektiv av individuelle spillere, mens dekningen av Amazon er blottet for slike karakteristika. I dekningen av kvinnefotballaget er oppmerksomheten rettet mot økonomiske problemer, sponsorbråk og dårlige resultater. Ved å bruke kultur- og kjønnsteoretiske tilnærminger ser vi hvordan medias dekning av fotball er hierarkisk oppbygd og bidrar til å opphøye herrefotball og trivialisere kvinnefotball.

Studies conducted over the past sixty years have reported stereotypical gender representation in school materials. Initiatives to counteract sexism have led to improvements, and the most overt gender-biased examples are less visible today. Despite this, studies still report gender imbalances. Since language has an enormous impact on how normative perceptions are created, increased knowledge about how we communicate and create knowledge about gender is needed. This study focuses on gender in EFL textbooks used in Swedish primary school. To reveal patterns of representation, a corpus was constructed and tagged to enable searches. The study reveals both equal and unequal representations. Equal patterns are shown in the numerical representation of proper names, and in verbs and adjectives collocating with females and males. However, animals and fantastic characters identified as either male or female in the books show traditional gender representations, with male characters not only occurring more frequently than equivalent female characters but also being represented as more active and innovative. The pronoun he is also considerably more common than she in the material.

The purpose of this study is to examine the attitudes of middle school 7th and 8th grade students towards STEM education in Turkey and Ghana. The research was conducted to a total of 974 grade 7 & 8 middle school students (480 from Turkey-Mugla Province and 494 from Ghana-Accra Province) during the spring semester of 2018-2019 academic year. A quantitative research method was used in this research. The attitudes of the students towards STEM show statistically significant difference in each dimension depending on which country the schools are located. The study revealed that the students' attitudes towards STEM education were “positive”. While there was no significant relationship between students' attitudes towards STEM and their gender and grade levels, there was a significant difference between their attitudes and the place where their schools were located.

During the first half of the twentieth century, the accordion was a hugely popular musical instrument that held a strong position within Swedish dance and popular music. Through concerts, record releases and radio performances the accordionists became popular artists, and as skilled musicians, composers and educators they influenced what has come to be defined as accordion music. To most people, the expected image of these accordionists is the one of a male musician. But as a matter of fact, there have been many female accordionists active in Sweden as professional musicians who have been disregarded in music history. In this article, I want to shed light on these women by questioning if and how the stipulations for female accordionists differed from those of their male colleagues. By following about twenty female accordionists, active between the years 1930-1980, I will note that although female accordionists embraced the same repertoire and stylistic ideals as men in accordion music, there have been differences in the qualifications required to be a professional musician. On the one hand, women were expected to combine their musicianship with expected female musical roles such as singers and dancers. On the other hand, they were excluded from areas that were considered reserved for men, such as making records, educational work and composing. I will therefore argue that the phrase "female accordionist" does not just describe a woman playing the accordion. More than that, it sums up societal and patriarchal structures as well as musical ideals that separated female accordion players from the expected male norm of an accordionist. The article is based on interviews, sound recordings, photographs and other archival material from the collections of Svenskt visarkiv (The Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research). Printed publications as the magazine Accordion Journalen (1949-1963) and the encyclopedia Svenska dragspelare (1946) have also been used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the universe of the traditional ballad from a perspective that problematizes gender power relations and masculinity. This universe is generally characterised by masculine domination, separation of male and female spheres, and manifest structures of power. Masculine violence, not least sexual violence, tends to be normative, especially in heroic ballads and ballads of chivalry, although other masculinities also exist. Feminine power is usually circumscribed, and feminine violence is accepted only under certain conditions. Several narrative motifs concerning masculinity, femininity, violence and power structures can be traced across different ballad types. The author analyses some of these motifs, and clusters of motifs, using the methods of re-reading, close reading and cross-reading. Examples are taken from the Scandinavian and English-Scottish ballad corpora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis in this article develops a theory of the mediation of social inequalities by economic forms. It is argued that economic forms are co-constituted with unequal social relations (e.g., race, class and gender) and that economic forms bring such relationships together. The theory is developed with reference to the co-constitution of determinate constructions of race and the commodity form (including its legal construction as an abstract form of property) and the form of wage labor. These processes of co-constitution entail the reproduction and modification of dualist modes of thought traceable to the prehistory of the commodity form; their interconnections to economic forms relate otherwise dissimilar inequalities to this characteristically modern duality. In turn, these common symbolic features facilitate the mutual articulation and reinforcement of different inequalities. This theoretical argument is illustrated by the mutual articulation and reinforcement of race and class in the disjunction of free and unfree labor which defines modern wage labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the turn of the twentieth century, several retellings of Homer's epic and Greek mythology were published for children in Sweden. Fridtjuv Berg's Trojanska kriget (The Trojan War, 1901) in the canonical publication series Barnbiblioteket Saga (The Children's Library Saga) became one of the most long-lived. This article examines the characteristics of Berg's rewriting by an analysis of the organization of the narrative, paratextual features, and the depiction of gender. Berg's strategies are compared with another contemporary rewriting of The Iliad, Kata Dalström's Grekiska guda- och hjältesagor (Greek Tales of Gods and Heroes, 1893). The article shows that the two rewritings mainly depict the same events and in the same order. Trojanska kriget foregrounds the historical content of The Iliad in the paratexts and by structuring the narrative around the foundation and fall of Troy. Dalström's paratexts stress the timelessness of the work by references to a long cultural tradition, which is reinforced by illustrations depicting artworks from different eras. Berg's book is more richly and uniformly illustrated, and Louis Moe's illustrations highlight the action of the tale. Furthermore, Berg and Dalström focus on different aspects when abridging the tales, which influences the depiction of gender. While both rewritings describe a patriarchal society, Berg puts greater emphasis on male relationships and heroism. The women are mainly described as passive victims of war or masculinist power structures. Dalström's version contains a greater variety of women. The comparison makes clear that Berg's greater interest in the historical and factual aspects of Homer's epic may have contributed to a more conservative gender ideology. At the same time, the rapid action of Trojanska kriget together with the publication context in Barnbiblioteket Saga are probably two of the factors behind the book's success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Security and Vulnerability After Armenia’s Velvet Revolution: Elite Perceptions on Gender Equality, Human Rights and Conflict Resolution The Velvet Revolution in spring 2018 and the snap elections that followed in December 2018 shook Armenia. This article examines the country’s new political elite and other central social elites, and their affective and evaluative beliefs with respect to human security, drawing on an elite survey conducted in 2017 and 2019, complemented by in-depth interviews. The aim is to shed light on whether Armenia’s elite-level political culture is headed for progressive change concerning the rights of disadvantaged groups, primarily women and sexual minorities – an expectation among the young and educated in Yerevan. This study finds that, as regards reducing vulnerability and increasing the security and freedom of choice for those traditionally disadvantaged in Armenian society, the values and judgments of the new elites have remained basically traditional.

Abstract The decision to raise the employment protection age limit in Norway (from 70 to 72) evoked considerable debate, with both employers’ associations and most trade union confederations opposing the change. The arguments set forth revealed a need for more knowledge about the oldest workers, and factors contributing to a late exit from the labour market. In this article, we use panel data from the Norwegian Life course, Ageing and Generation Study (2007, 2017) to explore previous work history of those who end up with careers extending beyond typical retirement age (i.e. 67). Our findings indicate that men and women who are still working when aged 67–75 have a history of high work engagement and work effort. Compared to their non-working peers in 2017, they were more likely to consider work as very important in life, perceive their job motivation as stable or improved, work long hours, be self-employed, and either have planned a late exit or made no retirement plans ten years earlier (2007). All in all, a strong inner drive for work seems to be central for a prolonged career; although among women, some may have to remain in the labour market due to financial reasons.

I denne artikkelen retter jeg oppmerksomheten mot hvordan forestillinger om kjønn, rase og kropp kommer til uttrykk i såkalt kjønnstesting i internasjonal eliteidrett. Gjennom å utforske presentasjonen av Caster Semenya, mellomdistanseløperen fra Sør-Afrika som «et problem», viser jeg hvordan regelverk og praksiser for kjønnstesting holder fast ved en binær kjønnsforståelse som plasserer Semenya, og andre kvinnelige eliteidrettsutøvere i en paradoksal situasjon. Jeg hevder at når noen kvinnekropper identifiseres som mistenkelige og utsettes for kjønnstesting, er dette et utrykk for hvordan kvinnelige eliteidrettsutøvere holdes ansvarlige for «gjennomsnittskvinnens» kroppsliggjorte femininitet og kvinnelighet. Jeg stiller spørsmål ved kjønnstestingens vitenskapelighet, og utforsker hvordan historisk forankrede forestillinger om kjønn, rase og kropp artikuleres gjennom et normativt hvitt blikk. Med fokus på et aspekt av kjønnstesting, som til nå ikke har fått mye oppmerksomhet i norsk kjønnsforsking, utforsker jeg hvilke forestillinger om kjønn og rase som ligger til grunn for kjønnstestingens historie og praksis, og hvordan disse bidrar til innrammingen av Caster Semenya som «idrettens store dilemma».

This article aims to extend existing work on bias and leadership aspirations by investigating whether there are significant differences in self-evaluations when jointly considering gender and parental status. With a data subset from a survey of 866 women and 1372 men members of the leading Danish union for managers and leaders, we examine the relationship of gender and parental status with leadership aspirations. Contra theory-based expectations, our exploratory study's findings show little difference between mothers and women without children, whereas fathers report significantly higher leadership aspirations than men without children. Supplementary analysis indicates that lower aspirations are accompanied by lower self-evaluations of competence. Our findings thus suggest that men and women are differentially affected by combined gender and parenthood biases and that gendered social expectations for parents affect self-evaluations even in a national context characterized by high levels of gender equality before the law.

Purpose: Unconscious bias training has become a popular intervention for eliminating discrimination in the workplace. Particularly recruitment processes are said to become fairer and more objective if gender biases are eliminated through training of personnel. However, the concept of gender bias, and particularly the idea that it can be trained away, has also been critiqued as too limited in its focus on individual mental processes, thereby neglecting effects of context, interaction and power. Taking this critique as our starting point, we argue that gender bias needs to be theorised in relation to a specific interaction and normative context. This article aims at expanding the concept of gender bias beyond individual cognition. Developing a social practice perspective on gender bias in recruiting allows to widen the scope of explanation as well as intervention. Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper that contributes new insights into how to tackle (unconscious) gender bias by integrating relevant psychological literature and empirical findings. We build on cognitive social psychology, critical social psychology and on gender as a social practice to show that gender bias is not only an individual, but a fundamentally social activity that is embedded within organisational norms and power relations and reproduced in interaction. Findings: In this paper we carve out the potential for understanding gender bias as more than individual cognition and show how theorising gender bias as a social practice can become a vital concept for exploring and combatting bias in recruiting.

This study shows how labels anchored in unconscious bias can contribute to the gender institution. It draws on interviews with women leaders in Canadian for-profit organizations to illustrate how labels relate to unconscious bias towards women leaders, how labels delegitimize or legitimize women leaders, and how women leaders react to labels. Guided by these results, the study theorizes how the micro-level practice of labeling anchored in unconscious bias can uphold or disrupt gender categories and associated gendered social roles, thus shaping the gender institution.

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The article studies commercial actors and advertisements in the Swedish weekly press in order to trace how transformed gender roles during the Second World War were handled and negotiated in the commercial sphere. Two key dimensions of consumer society constitute the objects of study: 1) the weekly press’ and advertising industry’s actions and promotion of the role of female consumers during the war; and 2) the commercial advertisements’ representation of female consumers. The weeklies studied, Svensk damtidning, Hemmets Veckotidning and Vecko-revyn, reached a national readership and were directed towards households and especially women. The article concludes that although women were described as essential to national defence by keeping up home front morale, the war was largely absent in the advertisements. Instead, the ads tended to remind consumers of peace- time affluence and family-based gender ideals. This meant that while many women’s everyday lives changed dramatically as a consequence of national wartime mobilization, their desires were commercially channelled just as they had been in peacetime: towards looking after their appearance, caring for the household and choosing the right consumer goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This concluding commentary critically and constructively engages with the articles in this first multidisciplinary issue of the Nordic Journal of Socio-Onomastics. It does so in the spirit of affirmative critique, with the aim of advancing the ongoing dialogue on the social and political life of names and naming. The commentary concludes by arguing that the multidisciplinary field of socio-onomastics is best viewed as a contact zone, or space of convergence, for scholarship that examines the diverse ways in which names and naming shape, and are shaped by, worlds-in-the-making.

This study investigates how a design team with researchers and participants from different parts and levels of an organisation may function as a participatory method for socially transformative innovation. The experiences gained by a design team in one of Sweden’s major forestry companies are examined through a participatory, single case study approach, in which researchers and employees jointly developed new insights and ideas. The results reveal that the design team functioned well in terms of channelling the participants’ expertise and experiences into innovative ideas, but less well as regards aligning the latter with the company’s regular management procedures, thus reducing the function of the design team to an abstract symbol of organisational ‘modernity’, rather than an effective instrument for social transformation.

Aims: The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between performance and training characteristics of recreational runners participating in the BMW Oslo Marathon 2017. Methods: A descriptive quantitative, cross-sectional research design was used to collect information regarding the participants training characteristics. A total of 2,245 participants (42.6±11.2 years) with 938 female (41.2±10.9 years) and 1,307 males (43.7±11.4 years) who completed either the 10,000m, half-marathon or marathon were included. Results: Training volume tended to increase with increasing competition distance. A moderate to low negative relationship was observed between weekly training volume and finishing time for all distances. Runners aged ≥41 years tended to run slower than runners aged ≤40 years. Normal weight participants ran faster and trained more compared to overweight participants. Conclusions: Only small differences in running times were found for any of the distances between runners aged ≤40 and ≥41 years. Runners aged ≥41 years were found to run more km per week compared to runners aged ≥41 years. The runners in the present study trained, on average, fewer km per week than what has previously been reported and recommended for recreational runners in the research literature

Nordic popular education (folkbildning) has a history of emancipatory endeavours. At the same time it has also been involved in, and reproducing, different structures of power. By studying participants on a Folk High School course on global development, where intersectional power orders are critically challenged while also permeating and enabling the course, this article addresses this paradox. Interviews are analysed with tools from critical and cultural sociological theory. The purpose of the study is to deepen the understanding of the conditions and significance of critical popular education. The stories depict how the courses become alternatives to more male-dominated elite courses at the Folk High School; how class is mirrored as the course becomes a tool for either upward class mobility or (middle) class reproduction; and how a moral subjectivity is created through a relation to, and distancing from, discourses of tourism and traditional aid.