The purpose of this study was to investigate how temporary employment affects a work place and its employees and also, from a gender perspective, investigate how individuals relate to their insecure work situation. To achieve the purpose of the study, a qualitative approach was used, and the study is based on interviews with eight employees at a department store for consumer electronics. In order to understand and analyze the employees’ stories Guy Standing’s theory about the precariat and Raewyn Connell and Yvonne Hirdmans’ gender-theories were applied. The results of the study have shown that the current working conditions generate a high degree of insecurity and lack of control amongst the employees when it comes to future employment, work hours and income, which also affect the employees’ current and future personal life. The insecurity at the work place does furthermore cause high competition, disloyalty and absence of empathy amongst the workers, which weakens and challenges the norms that regulate human behavior. By, for example, stealing each other’s customers, the employees take measures to secure their position in the work place. Regarding the gender perspective the results have shown that both individuals who identify themselves as male and female feel insecure due to the work situation, but there are different, gender specified, ways to handle the insecurity. The individuals that identify themselves as male tend to handle the situation by for example highlight themselves and their work performance in order to maintain the superior position in the gender system, while it is characterizing for the femininity to be excessively self-critical.

The overall aim was to study transgender persons’ experiences of, and reactions upon, attitudes and social norms in relation to their gender identity. Another question that was relevant to answer was how transgender persons are affected by the hetero norm. The method used to collect data was through questionnaires published on the internet. The only requirement to participate was to be a transgender over 18 years old, and when the survey closed, 35 respondents had answered it. The questionnaire consisted of both quantitative and qualitative questions. Collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and content analysis. The results indicate that transgender persons living conditions are largely affected by norms, and that they encounter a considerable amount of negative attitudes due to their gender identity. To "pass" as either man or woman turned out to be something that made it easier for transgender people to evade negative attitudes. One hope is that this study can provide knowledge to different instances in the community to open up to be more open to critical thinking around norms. The conclusion was that persons with a transgender identity are affected by societal norms and by heteronormativity. It takes a lot of courage to be able to be one self but everything boils down to how strong a person are and the availability of support and role models in the surrounding society. / Studiens övergripande syfte var att studera transpersoners erfarenheter av, och reaktionerpå, omgivningens attityder samt samhällets normer i relation till deras könsidentitet. Ytterligare en fråga som var relevant att besvara var hur deras liv påverkas av heteronormen. Forskning kring transpersoner och hur de påverkas av normer och det omgivande samhället är relativt begränsat vilket var en av anledningarna till valet av ämne. Data samlades in genom enkäter publicerade på webben där 35 respondenter svarade. Kriterierna för att delta var att man var transperson och över 18 år. Svaren som kom in var från transpersoner spridda i Sverige. Enkäten bestod av både kvantitativa och kvalitativa frågor. Majoriteten av frågorna hade hämtats från Folkhälsomyndighetens frågeformulärriktat till transpersoner. Insamlat material har analyserats med hjälp av beskrivande statistik samt innehållsanalys. Resultatet tyder på att transpersoners livsvillkor i stor utsträckning påverkas av normer samt att de får utstå en hel del negativt bemötande på grund av sin könsidentitet. Att ”passera” som antingen man eller kvinna visade sigvara något som gör det enklare för transpersoner att undvika negativt bemötande. Kränkande behandling kom vanligast från främlingar och personer på internet. Negativt bemötande var något som respondenterna var vana vid och många berättade om händelser i vården där de blivit negativt bemötta av personalen. En förhoppning är att detta arbete kan bidra till att sprida kunskap till människor inom olika instanser i samhället för att öppna upp för ett mer normkritiskt perspektiv. Slutsatsen blev att transpersoner i stor utsträckning påverkas av normer och av det omgivande samhället. Dock beror mycket på hur stark man är som person, vilka förebilder som finns och hur mycket stöd man får från omgivningen.

Our interactions with objects build cultural codes, reflecting lifestyles, values, and identities beyond functional expectations. With open connectivity in the contemporary consumer environments, we have access to homogenized material cultures not only for daily activities but also for ceremonies and rituals to mark important events, such as birth, marriage, and death. What will happen to our cultural codes and diverse traditions when various cultural norms meet, exchange, clash, hybridize, and evolve? In this research, globalized material cultures were investigated to discover metaphoric comparisons, to formulate conceptual frameworks, and to develop informed design, which can address evolving cultural conditions appropriately, in comparison with commercialized goods. Considering we often ritualize sequential stages of life course or challenging events, but rarely divorce, I explored the socio-cultural norms of marriage and divorce in the current social construct to anticipate globally evolving divorce phenomena. My thesis focused on relatively unknown material cultures in ritualizing divorce by combining speculative design with semiotic, hybrid, idiosyncratic approaches to communicate desirable future scenarios for the emerging multi-cultural context. This research aims to explore how artifacts and rituals can help people cope with transitional events and how design practices can provide meaningful and reflective material cultures.

With workplace disasters in developing countries increasingly in the news, a major question is how to encourage consumers to use corporate social responsibility as a criterion in purchasing. Distinct from environmental concerns, social responsibility is defined here with respect to the humanitarian aspects of corporate practice, including fair wages and working conditions, equitable treatment of the disadvantaged, and restriction of child labor. Although the idea of socially responsible consumption (SRC) was first identified over forty years ago, most recent research on changing consumption habits focuses specifically on environmentally responsible consumption (ERC). Combining the psychological concept of social norms with economic emphasis on choice framing, research in behavioral economics has suggested that ERC can be promoted by “nudges,” low-cost initiatives that alter the decision environment to favor specific options. Here, we provide an overview of the existing literature on nudges and consumer choice, including the role of social norms, as well as other factors involved in successful social messaging. Previous research on ERC suggests that social norm nudges may result in higher rates of energy conservation, recycling and reuse, and purchasing of ecologically-friendly products. Applying these findings to the domain of SRC, we propose a set of possible interventions to increase consumer attention to social responsibility, highlighting the distinguishing roles of empathy and targeted demographic appeals in nudging consumers towards social change.

The aim of this study was to gain a better understanding of possible foster families’ views on fostering a child and what they consider to be important factors for deciding whether or not to become a foster family. The studys result is based on five semi-structured interviews with persons whom have an interest for becoming foster families and the findings were analyzed by using a norm theory. The way that the interviewed people described their views on fostering a child could in the analysis be seen as a result of different norms and they often described the ideal foster family based on either their own family or the nuclear family.

Demographic and Health Surveys from 2015-16 as well as previous research suggest that a majority of women in Tanzania justify intimate partner violence (IPV) and that such violence is very prevalent. Semi-structured interviews with women in rural and urban Babati, Tanzania, were conducted in February-March 2016, in which women gave conditional answers to questions on justification of IPV. The aim of this thesis is thus to offer a theoretical explanation for the ambivalence informants expressed regarding IPV. To do so, the theory of double consciousness, which has not been applied to gender issues before, was applied in a qualitative content analysis of informants’ statements. This thesis will argue that double consciousness offers a plausible explanation for the conditional answers given by informants, since they reflected a two-ness among women, in the form of non-justification of IPV, but ideas about women’s obligations that are incompatible with ideals of gender equality. Women are thus aware of the gender oppression, while they still, to some extent, adapt to it.

The purpose of the study has been to describe and analyse in which way court make a distinction between honour related violence and violence in other cases by using an text analysis together with an content analysis. Previous research shows that honour related violence have been a controversial concept, which have made it hard for the swedish society to get a hand of the background of the phenomenon. Some researcher describe honour related violence as a cultural related lifestyle, all though some researchers does not agree with this explanation. The result have been analysed through a feministic perspective on gender, definitions of ascendancy, the normalizations process of violence and through honour and shame. To create an understanding of how the gender norms can take place in different family structures, Al-Baldawis pyramid of patriarchal family structure have been used as an illustration of the differences in authority of power. The main result shows that men's violence against women have been over represented, categorized after violence in close relationships. It also shows that the court´s assessment often is objective, based on the circumstances of the case.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om och i så fall hur motiveringarna bakom beslut gällande omedelbart omhändertagande med stöd av lag (1990:52) med särskilda bestämmelser om vård av unga (LVU), skiljer sig utifrån kön. Syftet med denna studie är också att undersöka vilka likheter och skillnader som finns i de ungas livsbakgrunder, som resulterat i beslut om omedelbara omhändertaganden enligt 6 § LVU. Vi ämnar att uppfylla studiens syfte med hjälp av följande frågeställningar: 1) Vilka beteenden och händelser leder till beslut om omedelbart omhändertagande för de unga? Hur kan dessa förstås ur ett genusperspektiv?  2) På vilket sätt formuleras likheter och skillnader i hur pojkars och flickors beteende och problematik beskrivs och bedöms i beslut enligt 6 § LVU? Metoden som har använts tillhör den hermeneutiska traditionen och är en textanalys formulerad av Lennart Hellspong och Per Ledin. Teorierna vi använt oss av är dels genusteori utifrån Judith Butler och denna kompletteras med de teoretiska begreppen normer och avvikande beteende. Resultatet visar att det finns både likheter och skillnader i besluten gällande flickor och pojkar. Skillnaderna är dels att de utifrån kön omhändertas på grund av olika beteenden, där pojkarna framför allt har problem som brottslighet och missbruk, medan flickornas problem snarare handlar om destruktivitet och miljön de befinner sig i. Vidare skiljer sig även formuleringarna utifrån kön, där pojkarnas beteenden är mer explicit beskrivna, medan flickornas beslut upplevs mer vaga och implicita i sina formuleringar. / The purpose of this study is to examine whether and if so, what the reasons behind the decisions on immediate custody under the Care of Young Persons Act (CYPA), differs by gender. The purpose of this study is also to examine the similarities and differences in young people's life backgrounds, which resulted in the decision on immediate care order under § 6 CYPA. We intend to examinate this using the following questions: 1) What behaviors and events leads to the decision on immediate custody of the young? How can these be understood from a gender perspective? 2) How are the similarities and differences in boys' and girls' behavior and problems described and evaluated in the decision regarding § 6 CYPA? The method used belongs to the hermeneutic tradition and is a text analysis formulated by Lennart Hellspong and Per Ledin. The theories we have used is partly based on gender theory by Judith Butler which is complemented by the theory concepts norms and deviant behavior. The result shows that there are both similarities and differences in decisions concerning girls and boys. The differences are that depending on gender the young are beeing taken in to immediate custody because of different behaviors, where the boys especially have problems like crime and abuse, while the girls' problems rather are focusing on the destructiveness and the environment they find themselves in. Furthermore, we also found different formulations based on gender. The boys' behavior is more explicitly described, and the girls' decisions are perceived more vague and implicit.

This paper uses micro-level data from a nationally representative survey of 22,000 individuals in 14 Eastern European countries to investigate the effects of institutional, social, and individual factors on taxpayers' perceptions of power, motivations to comply, and non-compliant behaviors. The results indicate that institutional, social, and individual aspects shape taxpayer behavior: attitudes of peers, individual compliance norms, and the tax burden impact on non-compliance. Moreover, I find several effects of the subjective appraisal of the interaction with tax administrations. Positive experiences strengthen perceptions of power and intrinsic motivations to comply. They also increase the propensity to report non-compliant behavior in the past, suggesting educational effects of taxpayer services and tax audits. (author's abstract) / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

This essay has the purpose to explore what awareness women in their professional lives have over how the choices they make affect their pension. Together with the reasoning behind the choices who will later affect their economy in old age retirement. Through connections with staff at a kindergarden I found women who unconstrained choose to be apart of the study, consisting of women in working age in a relationship and they all had children. It was my intention to make a qualitative interview study where I interviewed women to get their thoughts and how they act in certain situations during their professional life. After I had conducted the interwiews I noticed that the results could be seen in relationship to norms and values in socitey. By using a norm theory the answers could be analysed and the norm that was constructed by the women was highlighted. As a complement to the norm theory i used a gender theory to explain why these women took those actions whom was highlighted in these interwiews. The act that was highlighted was that women take more parental leave than men which research proves affects womens economic in retirement negative and the norm that could be constructed was that men work full time.