The aim of this article is to analyse the ways in which young adults reflect on their futures. We are particularly interested in how they expect to organize their lives in conditions that seem to ...offer pessimistic rather than hopeful prospects. How does this happen under social conditions where the major public and individual concerns are with how young adults organize their material lives and how they earn sufficient livelihoods to become good citizens? What are the grounds for their future visions? In our analysis we use 40 interviews with young Finnish adults aged between 18 and 30. The respondents are students, as well as employed and unemployed young adults. Our findings show that the young adults’ anticipated future experiences – contrary to common expectations – are positive. These conclusions are often drawn from social comparisons, especially with imagined peers. Those who saw their own and their peers’ future as depending more on luck focused on societal insecurity. One group that had positive expectations emphasized happiness. Instead of seeking material success, many of the young adults reported that their goal was to be happy in their future lives. Happiness appears to involve both living according to, and coping with, the demands of the economy and employment.
In this article, we address emerging tensions between researchers and journalists in our research project on formations of new divisions among young adults in Finland. We focus on interviewing as a ...method of data gathering, and on framing as a method of presenting research results. Writing from the point of view of academic researchers, our analysis shows that journalists’ and researchers’ ways of doing expertise, such as techniques for asking questions, reflections on interview sensitivities, anticipated end products or the conceptual framing of the collected data, differ from each other. At the conclusion of our analysis, we reflect on the affectivity of expert work and cooperation, and on the role of affects in bringing the moral orders of different forms of expertise to the surface.
Based on the identification of the discourse of choice in debates on neoliberalism, meritocracy and post-feminism, this article analyses how highly educated mothers position themselves within the ...discourse of choice and use choice as their discursive resource when reflecting on how their demanding careers combine with motherhood. The data come from 26 interviews with mothers employed in research and innovation in Finland. The analysis reveals five ways in which the mothers positioned themselves within the discourse of choice. It appears these ways are all based on, and produce, the moral primacy of individual self-governance. We treat this as a demonstration of how neoliberalism is internalized and lived. Furthermore, the results show that an egalitarian welfare society whose policies support work–childcare reconciliation does not remove the need to use the individualistic discourse of choice. We suggest that this could be changed by voicing the challenges it poses to many women.
ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This volume explores why, despite numerous programmes, women continue to constitute a minority in tech-driven research and innovation ...areas in the Nordic countries. Putting the spotlight on the lived experience of women, the authors make an invaluable contribution to global debates around the mechanisms that maintain gendered structures in Research and Innovation, from academia to biotechnology and IT.
Sukupuolten tasa-arvon uskotaan suomalaisessa yliopistossa jo toteutuneen. Silti epätasa-arvoa tuottavat käytännöt ovat jatkuneet vuosikymmenestä muodostuvat muuttuvassa yliopistoinstituutiossa. ...Aineistonamme on 30 urahaastattelua (vuosilta 2018–2020) naisilta, jotka ovat tehneet tutkimus- ja innovaatiotyötä terveysteknologian aloilla yliopistoissa. Metodologiana on institutionaalinen etnografia. Analysoimme yliopistoinstituution sukupuolittuneita käytäntöjä ja sukupuolten epätasa-arvon tuottamista väitöstutkijan, tutkijatohtorin, yliopistotutkijan ja professorin uravaiheissa. Pureudumme nimenomaan epätasa-arvon pysyvyyksiin. Peilauspintana käytämme 1980-luvun alun ja vuosituhannen vaihteen tutkimuksia naisten tutkijanuran ongelmista. Analyysi osoittaa sitkeitä sukupuolten epätasa-arvoa tuottavia käytäntöjä kaikissa uravaiheissa. Näitä käytäntöjä ovat erityisesti äitiyden ja tutkimustyön yhdistäminen sekä miesten keskinäiset verkostot ja suosimisjärjestelmät. Tasa-arvon edistämiseksi 2020-luvun yliopistoissa tarvitaan näiden pysyvyyksien tunnistamista ja järjestelmällistä toimintaa niiden murtamiseksi.
The aim of this article is to analyse the ways in which highly educated women ‘do’ and ‘undo’ gender when they reflect on their work and careers in research and innovation (R&I). The broader research ...task is to identify the gendering effects that ‘doing’ and ‘undoing’ gender achieve in R&I work. The findings indicate a constant uncertainty among interviewees about whether gender is significant at work. There are few signs of interviewees ‘undoing’ gender with the aim of changing the status quo. Instead, they conceive of gender as insignificant for various reasons, usually because of an absence of individual experience. They understand the core of gender equality at work in terms of a numerical balance of women and men and the promotion of balance in female-dominated work communities. The argumentation by women in R&I about ‘doing gender’ can be defined as ‘gender-doubtful’. Interviewees oscillate between two notions of the effects of gender: they see that gender may have an impact, but at the same time they resist any feelings about that impact by deploying counterarguments or scepticism. This article calls for an analysis of the ways in which doing and undoing gender are situationally specific.
This article analyses interdisciplinary practices produced and reproduced in Women's/Gender Studies teaching and curricula at the local level. In particular, the focus is on the role of communities ...of practice. The analysis shows that the interaction patterns in the WS/GS communities of practice have undergone fundamental transformations from informal networking within an emergent feminist academic community to diverse institutionally driven interaction platforms. Institutionally, WS/GS teaching has gone through stages of integration with other disciplines to autonomy and back to integration. Further, academic organizational practices, which are currently bound to university reforms, will probably have an increasing structuring role in the future of WS/GS teaching. At the same time, these processes have shown that academic structures are flexible and have indeed provided space for the autonomy of WS/GS, and space for developing interdisciplinarity towards transdisciplinarity.
•We analyze shifting understandings of Gender Studies as an interdisciplinary field.•Teaching and curricula have moved towards transdisciplinarity.•The case study tells a story of GS integration to autonomy and back to integration.•Local communities of practice are essential in gaining space for GS teaching.•The institutionalization of GS has produced diversification inside the GS community.
Power and pedagogy II: Introduction Alvanoudi, Angeliki; Korvajärvi, Päivi
The European journal of women's studies,
02/2012, Volume:
19, Issue:
1
Journal Article
This paper is concerned with the dynamics of producing gendered hierarchies in the workplace. While the focus is on the present day, developments over the past ten years are also examined. The term ...‘doing gender’ is adopted as a method of outlining these dynamics within seemingly static gendered hierarchies. Within the case study organization, a Finnish employment office, the ways of doing gender have shifted from maintaining gendered hierarchic harmony towards women?*s and men's separate but invisible cultures. However, men's practices are linked in a more direct way to the textual and official goals of the organization, whereas women's working methods show some implicit opposition to the organizational logic. Throughout gendered contradictions are emphasized: between inequality and equal opportunities; informal sociability and formal rules; and the invisibility and visibility of gender.
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