Charlott Nyman

Gender Equality in ‘The Most Equal Country in the World’? Money and Marriage in Sweden:

This article analyses how Swedish couples perceive the sharing of money and consumption between themselves and their partner. Interviews were conducted with ten Swedish married couples. Each spouse was interviewed separately about their incomes, financial organization, patterns of consumption, views about money and decision-making. Regardless of whether they pooled their incomes or kept money separately, all were in agreement about the importance of equal sharing and access to money and consumption. Despite stated goals of gender equality, however, consumption was not perceived as being shared equally. Two factors central to understanding this were the ways that daily finances were managed and the fact that women had responsibility for the daily finances of the family. Another important aspect was the ways that items of consumption were defined. Food and childrens clothes were areas that were in a ‘grey zone’ regarding which money was used to pay for them, and they often fell to the woman. This practical responsibility and associated awareness of the family economy serve as obstacles to womens sense of entitlement and access to money for personal discretionary spending, a problem not experienced by men.

Fair or unfair? : Perceived Fairness of Household Division of Labour and Gender Equality among Women and Men: The Swedish case

The main aim of this study is to analyse how time use, individual resources, distributive justice and gender ideology influence perceptions of fairness concerning housework and gender equality. The analyses are based on survey data as well as on an interview study, both including Swedish couples. The quantitative results show that it is only factors connected to time use (division of housework and leisure time) that are significantly correlated to both perceptions of fairness concerning division of household labour and gender equality. Although the qualitative results in part confirm this picture, they also illustrate the complexity of concepts like fairness and equality. The interviews show that there are several factors and mechanisms at work in influencing perceptions of fairness and equality that were not possible to see from the quantitative analysis alone.

An Overview: Research on Couples and Money

Research on couples and money can be found in several separate but related and sometimes overlapping areas of inquiry. An early and important starting point is poverty research. From the days of Rowntree’s (1902) pioneering research on poverty in turn-of-thecentury Britain, and then Young and Willmot’s (1957) study in mid-century, the family has been regarded as a single homogenous unit and has been often studied as such. The focus on the family1 unit has had as its (explicit or implicit) point of departure, as well as having helped to perpetuate, several assumptions about families in general and about money in families specifically. One such assumption is that there exists little or no variation within families regarding how they handle finances, consumption and the allocation of resources between family members. A second assumption is that resources are shared equally among family members. A third assumption that follows on the first two is that all family members enjoy (or suffer) the same standard of living. The ‘logical’ conclusions of these assumptions are that poverty and deprivation are only experienced by members of poor families, and that no members of non-poor families experience poverty (Millar and Glendinning 1989: 375). A considerable body of research during the last few decades has, however, shown that this is not always the case.

Elusive Independence in a Context of Gender Equality in Sweden

This quote from the final report from the Swedish Commission on Women’s Power1 underlines the different meanings and implications that economic independence can have for women and men. For centuries ideas about individual freedom, independence, the right to vote and to participate in public and economic life have been associated with men.2 It was not until the early twentieth century that these came to be associated with and granted to women in most countries in the West; in Sweden women gained national suffrage in 1921. Economic independence has been a concept reserved for men while women’s economic dependence has been taken for granted. As a result of increased industrialization and urbanization, an ideology (and ideal) that included complementary roles for women and men, and women’s economic dependence on a breadwinner husband, spread during the 1930s and reached its peak in the 1950s. An increased demand for women in the workforce, rising wages for women (in relation to men’s) and ideas of women’s liberation contributed to a significant increase in women’s labor market activity in many European countries and in North America. For many women earning an income of their own and having their own money (perhaps for the first time) meant at least a certain degree of economic freedom and independence.

On the other side of couplehood : single women in Sweden exploring life without a partner

This article describes Swedish women’s experiences of life as single. Data showed that singlehood was not actively chosen but rather a situation that participants ended up in due to separation from ...