This essay aims to deal with prevailing beliefs about men and women's responsibilities during the Second World War in Sweden. This has been done through a case study of the female organization Fredrika Bremerförbundet in the town of Karlstad. The aim has been to determine whether the members of Fredrika Bremerförbundet had a will to work within the areas considered to belong to the men during the period. In order to answer this, the paper has examined how the preparedness period influenced the organizations attitude to female work outside of the home and also how the organization discussed female political influence. The theoretical approach has been Yvonne Hirdman's theory that there has been a gender contract at various times through history. The contract stands for the current agreement with regards to the responsibilities of men and women in a society. The point of interest has been the housewife contract that she sees as current during the Second World War. The housewife contract refers to the fact that the women's responsibilities during this period consisted of household duties and social work, while their husbands spent their time in the public life and held the political power. The study has shown that Fredrika Bremerförbundet in Karlstad had an ambition to break the housewife contract, both with regards to trying to make women work in public and also to have influence in politics. However, as shown in previous research, that will also be discussed, it has been seen that the housewife contract remained. For example, women's work in the home and with children limited their opportunities to engage outside the household. In summary, it has nevertheless been possible to see a seed for a new contract where the women also has a place in public life outside of their home and to take part in politics. As a result it is possible to see, already during the period of 1939-1945, traces of a contract that is closer to equality.

The choice of studying motherhood was born out of our own self- perceived experiences as mothers, and in the sense of having a “book of rules” constantly present in the motherly role. Throughout times the motherly discourses surrounding motherhood have included aspects such as caring for and nurturing children, to take care of the household chores and to overall have an all seeing eye over the logistics of the home. In contrast, the men´s primary task is to provide the family with economic capital. ”The good mother”- this pure madonna figure, is often linked to a naturalness discourse which points towards women as created to bear children, giving birth and then finding themselves instinctively knowing how to take care of the newborn. This idea of motherhood as the women´s primary task is traditional in the sense of being rooted in historical contexts. Through a qualitative study, we wish to contribute to a wider understanding of the complex ways in which discourses work and affect the individual lives of women adulging in motherhood, focusing on their own experiences of motherhood. We have chosen to interview nine women from three different families, in each family three generations. Previous research points at two big discourses in western society- the naturalness discourse and the discourse surrounding gender equality. With a focus on these two discourses the study also is carried out with a lifecourse perspective as a way of capture the very important aspect of time. Time is a central part in our attempt to understand the ways in which discourses work, travels and modifies over time. Our findings, watching three generations of mothers reinforces the picture of the work towards equality is both complex and far from done. The motherly discourses are, even today, often characterized by a traditional thinking motivated by and linked to a perception of the natural when it comes to the different roles men and women are attributed. This, in turn, causes a collision with a “modern” discourse surrounding equality. Nowadays the roles embedded in the gender contract is overall more equal than before. Thus you could expect women to, in greater occurence, be freed of the discursive fetters. Despite this, this study points at the opposite direction, leaving us with a feeling of failure when it comes to gender equality. A traditional discourse of “the good mother” is still present in a modified “modern” version. Women in western society therefor are free when it comes to a lot of aspects, but not fully free in the sense of being themselves in the motherly role.

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In this paper I will examine how the Finnish Armed Forces use representation to portraywomen within the military, in the context of marketing. I will do this partly by analyzingvisual texts, but also by performing a critical discourse analysis. Part of my aim is to reveal which discourses are present in the empirical material, which consists of three recruitmentbrochures. I also examine in what way the Finnish Armed Forces use these discourses toeither change or (re)produce the existing order of discourse. The main theoretical frameworkconsists of representation theory by Stuart Hall. Representation can according to Hall be usedas a power tool to control and (re)produce discourses in society. As a government institutionthe Armed Forces have the power to exclude or under-represent groups from a discourse,which results in a hegemony upheld by the same institutions. My results help uncover the ways in which military organizations, even in countries that are seen as rather equal, still havesome way to go until they reach full equality. My empirical findings show that the Finnish Armed Forces have not succeeded in representing women and men equally. Both men andwomen are often portrayed in a stereotypical manner. Consequently, The Finnish Armed Forces are contributing to a (re)production of existing traditional discourses, and are thereforecurrently not challenging any norms regarding what women in the Finnish Armed Forces canbe like.

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Students with parents with different levels of education motivate their choice of Växjö University differently. They who have parents with at least three years academic studies motivate more frequently their choice with the program they are studying while those who have parents with lower studies are more inclined to motivate their studies with contacts and nearness to their hometown. I found this in a survey study with 201 respondents involved. The result was followed by interviews on respondents from the survey study. The interviewees were four women whose parents had different levels of education, two with parents with higher education and two with parents with lower education. The interviews were in this way limited to female students only. The conclusion is that the difference in how the students motivate their choice of Växjö University can partly be explained by the theory called “könskontraktet” which says, women from higher social classes want to brake out from the old gender roles, and that makes them value education and carrier, while those who are from lower social classes accept the old traditions between genders which makes them value family and safety. This don´t need to lead to reproduction of social classes and that it goes from parents to children if there is good accessibility to the universities and you can get higher education without moving a long distance.

This thesis have identified strategies of resistance in Anne Charlotte Lefflers drama Skådespelerskan from year 1873. The main character Ester and the supporting character Agda continously challenges and breaks generally accepted patriarchal norms. The first aim for the thesis was to distinguish and examine Agda’s and Ester’s strategies of resistance in Skådespelerskan from a feminist perspective. The second thesis was to identify similarities and differences in their strategies of resistance. This has been done by examine textual, contextual and performative literary strategies of resistance. Relevant for the analysis is an historic and contemporary context for Skådespelerskan, where for instance personal and public sphere and the concept the New woman is described. Furthermore is Yvonne Hirdmans theories about gender contract together with feminist sociological theories about women’s movement and solidarity relevant for the analysis. Earlier research have analyzed Ester and her relationships with other charachters but not the one with Agda. In that way this thesis fills a void. The analysis is organized through four strategies of resistance. Agda’s strategies of resistance is humor and sisterhood and Ester’s is outspokenness and flirtation. The biggest difference is that Agda gives resistance from within the personal sphere and Ester from outside. The conversations between Agda and Ester is not part of the drama, they take place between the two parts of the drama. The result of these confidential conversations is that their resistance partly increases and partly changes tone in the second part of the drama. That shows how important it is with solidarity and sisterhood in order to find strength to struggle for change in a patriarchal society.

Women’s wartime work is a well-known phenomenon in belligerent countries. But what happened in a neutral country like Sweden? With the outbreak of the Second World War, Sweden was put in a state of “national preparedness” that would last from September 1939 until the end of war in May 1945. From the autumn of 1939 the State Labour Market Commission (Statens arbetsmarknadskommission, SAK) had sent out signals to the employers’ associations in the engineering industry and at the ironworks that their male employees would not be granted exemptions from military service. Employers therefore had to find reserve workers, either men too old to be conscripted or women. The main purpose of this thesis is to explore how the threat of war affected the plans for and the use of women’s labour during the years of national preparedness. The national preparedness organisation did not include a plan ready for use to mobilise women either for work or for voluntary efforts for the nation during this period. The absence of a state plan for women’s national efforts became the point of departure for the Women's Organisations' Preparedness Committee, (Kvinnoföreningarnas beredskapskommitté, KBK) in 1938. The founding intention of this organisation was to gather Swedish women as a demonstration of their will to defend their country. A huge number of women – 800 000 – signed up for various tasks. This organisation was dominated by women who were eager to contribute to the national defence, and was not fully representative of the traditional women’s movement. With the passing of The National Compulsory Service Act (tjänstepliktslag) in December 1939 both men and women had become eligible for conscription. This was supposed to provide an instrument through which the government would be able to guarantee the supply of industrial labour. But the National Compulsory Service Act was never put into effect with regard to women. Instead, the governmental strategy to reach the female workforce was to establish a liaison between the state and the KBK. The Swedish way was the volunteer way. But this policy required propaganda. And so “Mrs. Loyal” made her entry in a state initiated propaganda newsreel on Swedish cinemas in January 1944. Mrs. Loyal was introduced as an example of “the national preparedness woman of today”. As a reserve worker in the engineering industry, she replaced a man who was called up for military service. The Mrs Loyal propaganda was aimed at married women whose children were grown up. The film presented the ideal situation where women registered for these courses voluntarily, to be fully trained if and when they were needed in industry. Towards the end of the war the SAK made inquiries to investigate the outcome of industrial employment during the war years. It then appeared that the Mrs Loyal-campaign had had an unexpected result. Few of the married housewives Mrs Loyal was supposed to attract had followed her example. In reality, it was a different group of women who took advantage of the opportunity. Young, unmarried women – daughters who still lived at home – saw an opening for them to leave home and earn their own livings. For these young women the preparedness situation and labour shortage actually became an opportunity for emancipation. How are we to understand the significance of the years 1939–1945 in terms of gender relations? The years of national preparedness in Sweden never became the opportunity for a broad range of women to leave their homes and become wage earners. In terms of gender contract, the housewife contract remained dominant. The traditional gender order never changed. The call for women workers was never a question of equal rights, just the temporary needs of the nation. But even if the changes were as superficial as the propaganda image, the need for women workers led to some changes. The question of equal pay was finally brought up on the political agenda with women’s entry in the engineering and ironworks industries. The conditions of labour shortage also placed a focus on other questions concerning the consequences of the protective labour legislation for women, like the prohibition against women’s night work and the question of women’s part-time work. The government had the opportunity to present new guidelines for women’s work at the end of the war. Instead a pattern was institutionalised that reinforced an image of women workers as a “latent labour reserve”. The propaganda picture of Mrs Loyal was forgotten, but in reality both married and unmarried women went on seeking solutions to the difficulties of combining wage work with children and housework.

The twentieth century has witnessed a revolution in the ways in which the social division of labour is organised, and in terms of how waged work and caring for children are reconciled. This study explores family policy from the perspective of its capacity to manage the socio-economic risks emanating from combining the roles of breadwinner and caregiver which many parents are beginning to do in contemporary society. This study is focused on Russia and Sweden, countries which have a large share of their female population in the labour force and an institutionalised public policy directed towards meeting the challenges of childrearing in dual-earner families. In the first empirical stage of the study, I examine the establishment and development of family policies in these countries, and analyse their effects in terms of how they have attempted to reconcile the competing demands of work and family life in recent years, specifically, by focusing on three main components: parental leave regulations, the organisation of early childcare and education, and schemes of financial assistance and support for families with children (including their impact on poverty reduction, with the use of Luxemburg Income Survey data). The next stage, involved the exploration of the normative setting in which employment and parenting are realised. To do this I used survey data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), and its modules on Family and Gender Roles. In the final stage, by conducting in-depth interviews with families in Stockholm and St. Petersburg I was able to examine how decisions about using the available public means of assistance and support are negotiated within households, and which factors, other than public policy, influence such decisions. The results of these three empirical parts are juxtaposed in order to establish the relation between official inputs into family policy and the complex picture of its outcome in the two countries.

This thesis examines the local waterscapes of two smallholder irrigation farming systems in the dry lands of East African in a context of socio-ecological changes. It focuses on three aspects: institutional arrangements, gender relations and landscape investments.  This thesis is based on a reflexive analysis of cross-cultural, cross-language research, particularly focusing on the role of field assistants and interpreters, and on member checking as a method to ensure validity. Flexible irrigation infrastructure in Sibou, Kenya, and Engaruka, Tanzania, allow farmers to shift the course of water and to extend or reduce the area cultivated depending on seasonal rainfall patterns. Water conflicts are avoided through a decentralized common property management system. Water rights are continuously renegotiated depending on water supply. Water is seen as a common good the management of which is guided by mutual understanding to prevent conflicts through participation and shared information about water rights. However, participation in water management is a privilege that is endowed mostly to men. Strict patriarchal norms regulate control over water and practically exclude women from irrigation management. The control over water usage for productive means is a manifestation of masculinity. The same gender bias has emerged in recent decades as men have increased their engagement in agriculture by cultivating crops for sale. Women, because of their subordinated position, cannot take advantage of the recent livelihood diversification. Rather, the cultivation of horticultural products for sale has increased the workload for women who already farm most food crops for family consumption. In addition, they now have to weed and harvest the commercial crops that their husbands sell for profit. This agricultural gender divide is mirrored in men´s and women´s response to increased climate variability. Women intercrop as a risk adverting strategy, while men sow more rounds of crops for sale when the rain allows for it. Additionally, while discursively underestimated by men, women´s assistance is materially fundamental to maintaining of the irrigation infrastructure and to ensuring the soil fertility that makes the cultivation of crops for sale possible. In sum, this thesis highlights the adaptation potentials of contemporary smallholder irrigation systems through local common property regimes that, while not inclusive towards women, avoid conflicts generated by shifting water supply and increased climate variability. To be able to assess the success and viability of irrigation systems, research must be carried out at a local level. By studying how local water management works, how conflicts are adverted through common property regimes and how these systems adapt to socio-ecological changes, this thesis provides insights that are important both for the planning of current irrigation schemes and the rehabilitation or the extension of older systems. By investigating the factors behind the consistent marginalization of women from water management and their subordinated role in agricultural production, this study also cautions against the reproduction of these discriminatory norms in the planning of irrigation projects. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript.</p><p> </p>