| Summary: | The Swedish welfare model has long been based on the motto that as many people should work as much as possible. Paid work is considered to be an institution that creates a sense of belonging, identity and purpose in life. For women in particular, paid work has been a means towards economic freedom and emancipation from men. Sweden is today considered to be at the forefront of gender equality policy development. Despite that, there are still significant differences concerning gender equality in regard to which sex has the largest responsibility for the unpaid care and domestic work at home. Also, the amount of labor hours differs depending on if you are a man or a woman. There seems to be a consensus between different feminist researchers and politicians that there is a link between working hours and gender equality, but how is this connection outlined? This thesis makes visible the prevailing knowledge of working hours, linked to gender equality, that gender experts have produced within the Swedish Government Official Report series, and which has thereby made the issue manageable. Through Bacchi’s discourse analysis “What is the problem represented to be?”, the study critically studies the statements made by Delegationen för jämställdhet i arbetslivet (JA-delegationen) and applies Kathi Weeks critical view of work on the analysis. The study concludes that there are two prominent problem representations: women’s part-time work and fathers’ low participation in the unpaid care and domestic work. Both problem representations assume that only women in a relationship with small children are affected by the problems, and that both norms, agents and structures come into play. This in turn makes single mothers as a group invisible. The report creates a dichotomy between part-time, and full-time work and thereby a dichotomy between paid work and unpaid care and domestic work, by instilling the latter with low value which solidifies the current work ethic. This in turn has consequences for what type of politics is made possible and impossible. The report makes possible the subject of the female worker and the male caregiver.
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