The Future is Familiar - Young Swedes Imagining Work-life Balance in Their Future Adulthood
(2022) SIMZ21 20221Graduate School
- Abstract
- This thesis explores the imagined futures of young Swedes with a focus on how they envision creating work-life balance and how they aim to divide their time between paid and unpaid work. This is done by analyzing written accounts of 168 upper secondary students from both university preparatory schools (UP) and vocational schools (VO) in a middle-sized town in Sweden. Three top-level strategies for creating work-life balance are identified in the study: The Domestic Strategy, The Individualized Strategy, and The Having-it-all Strategy. A feminist, intersectional lens is applied when analyzing how categories of class and gender intersect in imagined futures. Arlie Hochschild’s (2012) concept of ‘the second shift’ is used to understand the... (More)
- This thesis explores the imagined futures of young Swedes with a focus on how they envision creating work-life balance and how they aim to divide their time between paid and unpaid work. This is done by analyzing written accounts of 168 upper secondary students from both university preparatory schools (UP) and vocational schools (VO) in a middle-sized town in Sweden. Three top-level strategies for creating work-life balance are identified in the study: The Domestic Strategy, The Individualized Strategy, and The Having-it-all Strategy. A feminist, intersectional lens is applied when analyzing how categories of class and gender intersect in imagined futures. Arlie Hochschild’s (2012) concept of ‘the second shift’ is used to understand the gendered patterns of division of time between paid and unpaid work that prevails in the empirical material. Female participants illustrate more awareness of the future responsibility of the second shift than the male participants and appear more torn between the choice of a family or a career than the men do. Additionally, the concept of ‘respectability’ from Beverley Skeggs (2002) is used when understanding classed differences in future work-life balance. The VO-women more often imagine themselves in traditional marriages doing the larger part of the second shift than the UP-women. The thesis concludes that the men appear to be in a position where they have better access to create WLB than the women do, furthermore the UP-men have a better position than the VO-men. UP-women wish to a greater extent for more gender equality in future families than VO-women do, meaning that VO-women are the group who will have the hardest time creating WLB in the future. (Less)
- Popular Abstract
- This thesis tells the story of young Swedes’ imagined futures. I have asked 168 upper secondary students in a mid-sized town in Sweden to write texts where they imagine their lives at age 35. I have asked them to reflect on what this life will look like and how they imagine creating balance between work, the family, housework, and leisure time. I wanted to see if there were differences in how men and women imagined their future adulthood and specially to see if they thought differently about dividing their time between work and the home. I also wanted to find out if there were differences in how students from university preparatory schools (UP- schools) (“högskoleförberedande gymnasieskolor”) and vocational schools (VO- schools)... (More)
- This thesis tells the story of young Swedes’ imagined futures. I have asked 168 upper secondary students in a mid-sized town in Sweden to write texts where they imagine their lives at age 35. I have asked them to reflect on what this life will look like and how they imagine creating balance between work, the family, housework, and leisure time. I wanted to see if there were differences in how men and women imagined their future adulthood and specially to see if they thought differently about dividing their time between work and the home. I also wanted to find out if there were differences in how students from university preparatory schools (UP- schools) (“högskoleförberedande gymnasieskolor”) and vocational schools (VO- schools) (“yrkesförberedande gymnasieskolor”) thought about their future lives. I found three different strategies for how to create work-life balance to be present in the imagined futures: The Domestic Strategy, The Individualized Strategy, and The Having-it-all Strategy. I found that the women in the study gave more thought to housework and that they seemed more torn between work and the home than men did. The women tended to see it as their responsibility to be in charge of the home including the housework while the men did not see this as their responsibility to the same degree. I also found that the UP-students thought more about the importance of gender equality in their future marriages than VO-students did. UP-women talked more about wanting to share the housework equally with their partners than VO-women did. This means that VO-women will likely have to take on more housework in the future than UP-women will, meaning that they will be the group who have the hardest time creating work-life balance. Overall, there are clear differences between the genders and the students from different schools when it comes to imagine their future lives and in how to create work-life balance. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9099452
- author
- Brodersen, Franciska Dis LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SIMZ21 20221
- year
- 2022
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- imagined futures, young people, work-life balance, gender inequality, the second shift, Sweden
- language
- English
- id
- 9099452
- date added to LUP
- 2022-09-20 08:51:42
- date last changed
- 2022-09-20 08:51:42
@misc{9099452,
abstract = {{This thesis explores the imagined futures of young Swedes with a focus on how they envision creating work-life balance and how they aim to divide their time between paid and unpaid work. This is done by analyzing written accounts of 168 upper secondary students from both university preparatory schools (UP) and vocational schools (VO) in a middle-sized town in Sweden. Three top-level strategies for creating work-life balance are identified in the study: The Domestic Strategy, The Individualized Strategy, and The Having-it-all Strategy. A feminist, intersectional lens is applied when analyzing how categories of class and gender intersect in imagined futures. Arlie Hochschild’s (2012) concept of ‘the second shift’ is used to understand the gendered patterns of division of time between paid and unpaid work that prevails in the empirical material. Female participants illustrate more awareness of the future responsibility of the second shift than the male participants and appear more torn between the choice of a family or a career than the men do. Additionally, the concept of ‘respectability’ from Beverley Skeggs (2002) is used when understanding classed differences in future work-life balance. The VO-women more often imagine themselves in traditional marriages doing the larger part of the second shift than the UP-women. The thesis concludes that the men appear to be in a position where they have better access to create WLB than the women do, furthermore the UP-men have a better position than the VO-men. UP-women wish to a greater extent for more gender equality in future families than VO-women do, meaning that VO-women are the group who will have the hardest time creating WLB in the future.}},
author = {{Brodersen, Franciska Dis}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Future is Familiar - Young Swedes Imagining Work-life Balance in Their Future Adulthood}},
year = {{2022}},
}