Editorial

With the Covid-19-pandemic decreasing, many of us have returned to the physical sites of our workplaces with re-configured ideas about what constitutes work, the workspace(s), colleagues, clients and professional interactions. Though the studies presented in this second issue of 2022 were undertaken before the mass shutdowns of the pandemic, the five articles featured provide very timely reflections on gender inequality and the power dynamics in these exact spheres, spaces and places, connected to the concept of work.

The contributions range from qualitative case studies in traditional male-dominated industries, such as Information Technology and mining, to mixed methods explorations in public sector healthcare, which in Denmark, where NORA—Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research is currently based, is tellingly characterized under the term “kvindefag”—women’s work. They come together in showing how contemporary feminist research can contribute to ongoing scholarly and public debates about working conditions and gender norms in the, perhaps now more than ever, multi-sited, stratified field of organizational- and working life.

We open this issue with “Contradictions in care: Ward nurses’ experiences of work and management in the Swedish public sector”, in which Rebecca Selberg, Magnus Sandberg and Paula Mulinari argue for a refocusing of feminist organizational critique of capitalism. Feminists should, they suggest, move beyond the focus on New Public Management-regimes to explore the specific spaces, processes, and contexts in which contradictions between labour and capital are, as they write, “reshaping the very essence of care”. Their qualitative analysis of interviews with 50 ward nurses working in the public health care system in Sweden is aiming at precisely this, showing how contradictions between care work and logics of capital are negotiated amongst the nurses.

Following this thought-provoking contribution, Lisa Ringblom in “‘It is Just a Joke!’ Informal Interaction and Gendered Processes Underground” examines workplace gender inequality from the perspective of the Swedish mining industry, paying special attention to “humorous” informal interaction, such as banter. Her study shows how workplace banter works to both maintain and challenge gendered norms and processes of organizations and so, reveal that informal, collegial chatter, that often goes unnoticed is ”in fact not just (italics!) a joke”, but very serious in its consequences.

“Gendered work–life ideologies among IT professionals” similarly takes its empirical starting point in a male-dominated industry, in this case that of Information Technology in Finland. In their study, focusing on the discursive construction of work-life relations, Suvi Heikkinen and Marke Kivijärvi detect and characterize two distinctly different work-life ideologies that seem to produce different gendered agencies, norms, and expectations, shaping how workers reconcile work with life. These ideologies, they suggest, may have negative implications for workers across gender identities in the IT-industry.

As health care professionals are among the groups most at risk for experiencing sexual harassment, Irene Trysnes, Elise Frølich Furrebøe, Laila Nordstrand Berg, Åsta Lovise Håverstad Einstabland, Claudia Klostergaard and Hanne Drangsholt in their mixed methods-study entitled

“‘Hot case-workers and squint-eyed whores’—Sexual harassment of Norwegian social- and health care students in practical training” set out to examine how students and higher education institutions handle and practice training in relation to this risk. The study indicates that students experience sexual harassment during practice, that guidance during and after incidents is often lacking and that students, in addition to this, experience negative consequences from sexual harassment incidents. The responsibility of handling sexual harassment, the study shows, is often left to the victim, and relies ultimately on their personal approach to managing negative emotions. Thus, the study adds to the persistent feminist documentation of silencing culture, a topic also receiving significant attention in mainstream media.

Concluding this line of studies on organizational and working life, in “From Glass Ceiling to Firewalls. Detecting and Changing Gendered Organizational Norms” Susanne Andersson, Dag Balkmar and Anne-Charlott Callerstig zoom in on gendered norms in a Swedish truck company. The authors introduce the new metaphor of a firewall, rather than the commonly used “glass ceiling”, which can be useful both for analysing how gendered norms are embedded and carried out in everyday organizational life, and as a practical tool in organizational work to improve norm awareness and initiate change.

This issue also features two book reviews: First, Emma Vikström discusses Ulla Åkerström and Elena Lindholms (eds.) anthology “Collective Motherliness in Europe (1890–1939): The Reception and Reformulation of Ellen Key’s Ideas on Motherhood and Female Sexuality”. Hereafter, Sari Kouvo engages with Brenna Bhandar and Rafeef Ziadahs “Revolutionary Feminisms. Conversations on Collective Action and Radical Thought”. We conclude, significantly, with Victoria Kawesa’s academic obituary honouring bell hooks and her ever inspiring legacy.

Finally, we would like to thank the authors for sharing the fruits of their labour with us in this work life-themed issue of NORA and, not least, the reviewers for their invisible and unpaid, but highly important work. As in so many other branches, academia too often fails to celebrate the people who create the foundation for it to exist. You know who you are: Thank you!