For decades, the man has been seen as the ideal of the role of the main breadwinner and the woman as the nurturing carer. As women become more educated, this leads to more females becoming breadwinners. Thus, being the main breadwinner as a woman is still a norm-breaking role today, but one that is likely to become increasingly common in the future. The aim of the study is thus to gain an understanding of the division of unpaid labour as these women may be considered norm-breakers. Furthermore, we want to reach an understanding of how/ if these women experience conflict when it comes to the role of primary breadwinner and her role as a mother. This qualitative study is based on interviews with female breadwinners who work full-time and are mothers. The theoretical framework of the study consists of Berger and Luckmann's theory of socialization, West and Zimmerman's theory of Doing Gender, the Doing Family theory by David Morgan, and the work-family conflict by Greenhaus and Beutell. The results of the study suggest that the women experience a conflict between their roles as mothers as well as working women. It also shows that women have different perceptions of equality in the home and the distribution of unpaid work. / Mannen har länge ansetts vara idealet för rollen som den huvudsakliga familjeförsörjaren och kvinnan som den omhändertagande omsorgstagaren. I takt med att kvinnor utbildar sig i allt högre utsträckning leder det till att allt fler kvinnor blir familjeförsörjare. Att vara den huvudsakliga familjeförsörjaren som kvinna är således än idag en normbrytande roll men som förmodligen kommer att bli allt mer vanligt förekommande i framtiden. Syftet med studien är således att nå en förståelse för hur uppdelningen av det obetalda arbetet ser ut då dessa kvinnor kan anses vara normbrytande. Vi söker dessutom att nå en förståelse för hur/om dessa kvinnor upplever en konflikt när det kommer till rollen som huvudsaklig familjeförsörjare och hennes roll som mamma. Denna kvalitativa studie baserar sitt resultat utifrån intervjuer med kvinnliga familjeförsörjare som är heltidsarbetande och mammor. Studiens teoretiska ramverk består Berger och Luckmanns teori om socialisation, West och Zimmermans teori Doing Gender, teorin Doing Family av David Morgan samt Work- family conflict av Greenhaus och Beutell. Studiens resultat tyder på att kvinnorna upplever en konflikt mellan sin roll som mamma såväl som huvudsaklig familjeförsörjare. Det framkommer även att upplevelsen av uppdelningen av hushållsarbetet anses vara ojämnt fördelat i olika mån.

Since the 1980s, practically all of the western welfare states have developed social policies, which aim at shifting the responsibilities for welfare services from the state to the family, the civil society or to the market. In Sweden, this political transformation has particularly hit the public eldercare. In the last twenty years, the percentage of the population 65 years and older receiving public home help services in Sweden has decreased from 23 to 8 per cent at the same time as the number of beds in hospitalized eldercare has been heavily reduced. Moreover, during the course of the 2000s, the majority of the Swedish municipalities have reintroduced means testing of the eldercare based on whether the elderly have relatives or not that can perform the services. Parallel with these downsizes in the publicly financed and organized eldercare; privately produced eldercare services have increased, carried out by large and internationally own business corporations. Based on an theoretical framework, which combines the historical approach within the neo-institutional research tradition with a discursive method of analysis, this thesis explores if the period from the 1980s and onwards has been a formative moment in Swedish eldercare during which new ideas have become embedded in the institutional frameworks regulating the division of responsibility for eldercare services between the state, the family and the market. To examine if and how the municipalities, which are principally responsible for organizing and financing the public eldercare in Sweden, have implemented the change in ideas that have emerged in national politics since the 1980s, the thesis also examines how the eldercare has developed in two of Sweden’s municipalities since the 1980s. The results of the thesis demonstrates that the period from the 1980s and onwards has been a formative moment in the Swedish eldercare during which new ideas regarding the public responsibility for eldercare service have emerged and become institutionalized. Since the 1980s, senior citizens’ need for care has increasingly been re-interpreted from a public to a private issue with the consequence that today, their need for certain services, in particular those related to housework, are no longer regarded to be a public responsibility but a private matter that the elderly will have to solve, either by buying the services on the market, or, by asking relatives for help and assistance. The main problem connected with this reprivatization of senior citizens’ need for care is, however, that as the state has withdrawn its responsibility, women, in their role of being wives, daughters, or daughters-in-laws, have been forced to step in as informal and unpaid providers of care. Therefore, regardless of political reigns and modes of production, women have been forced to taken on an increasingly larger responsibility for their elderly relatives.

Arbeit umfasst all jene Tätigkeiten, die zum gesellschaftlichen Fortbestand beitragen. Dazu gehört die produktive Arbeit, die gesellschaftlich relevante Güter und Dienstleistungen herstellt ebenso wie die reproduktive Arbeit, die sogenannte Care-Arbeit, die auf den Erhalt des menschlichen Lebens und der Arbeitskraft ausgerichtet ist. In der feministisch orientierten Erforschung von Arbeit wird die Relation zwischen den (Re-)Produktionsverhältnissen und den Geschlechterverhältnissen analysiert.