Family-friendly labour market policies and careers in Sweden -: and the lack of them

This article discusses the origin and development of family-friendly policies and careers in Sweden. The starting-point for the discussion is that what 'family-friendly' is can never be separated from the gendered labour market. Drawing on Lotte Bailyn's analysis of gender 'equity', the article argues that the Swedish labour market has no doubt become much more 'family-friendly' over the decades, through family-friendly reforms, but the move has definitely lost pace, maybe even been slightly reversed, in the 1990s and 2000s. Seemingly, political and social reforms cannot reach much further without a radical change in people's views of labour division at home, i.e. in the private sphere.