This study focuses on the poor regulation in year 1871 and 1918, in Sweden. By examining the regulation texts with help by Carol Bacchis method the study is easy to overview. With theories about gender, class and citizenship as the theoretical framework the study provides an analysis that the gender equality was poor and in booth class topics and the citizenship topics the equality and the love for the week and poor, subtle.             The empirical data illustrate that the law text speaks directly to the man, and thereby leaves the women out of the text, naming her only by the word ”wife” and once as women in the 1871 regulation. The gender equality was low and the man hade all the official power. The citizenship ideal was a hard working and sober man that took good care of himself hand his family. If the man did not succeed in this, his citizenship was not fulfilled. If you received money by the state as a poor subsidy, you lost your right to vote in national elections. This, and the fact that, if you hade family with money, they should take care of you instead of the state, by law, increased the class society.                      The synthesis argues that the thoughts about the less fortunate is not so very different, then as of today.

This essay examines the contact between the poor service and chronically and physically ill women during the first half of the 20th century at the Maria Magdalena parish at Södermalm in Stockholm. At the time the district was home to a substantial, poor population. Three years have been studied: 1906, 1916 and 1926 to investigate whether the amended Poor Care Act of 1918 affected the situation of the sick women. Through my results, I have not been able to see any real change except that fewer woman, in percentage terms, after 1918 were allowed to take part in the poor welfare support. The philanthropy was an important element in the lives of the poor women which diminished as time went by. My findings show that modern, medical science played a significant role in the lives of the sick women. The study also confirms that the women's behavior was the basis for the support they received from the poor service and that most of them were permanently supported and thus deprived of their right to vote. The study problematizes the stigma that the sick, poor women lived under, expectations based on gender roles connected to the possibility to receive help as well as the importance of paid work for participation in the community and a full citizenship. What is presented through the essay is that poor, sick women struggled with their livelihood during the examined period and that this group of people still do in our time in Sweden today.