The purpose of the study was to inquire into pupils? attitude towards the current beauty ideal from a gender- and an ethnicity perspective. The study was based on a quantitative survey among 116 young students about prevailing beauty ideal from two different schools in the Stockholm area. The result showed that the students are partially characterized by the stereotyped images of women and men but that there are tendencies towards another view especially among the girls. It is however clear that appearance still is important.

Work is an important part of the lives of humans, fulfilling several functions; it establishes possibilities to interaction and to feeling as belonging to a context, it gives structure to time and space, creates common goals and it leads to a general well-being in individuals. For the well-being of employees it is essential with recuperation in a pleasant environment where you under relaxing and informal forms have a chance to interact with colleagues. The aim of this study was to investigate to which extent the employees of Tetra Pak Packaging Material AB at Tetra Pak in Lund experience that the informal communication during the coffee-break contributes to their well-being. The aim was also to distinguish if this potential well-being effects how the employees experience how work in general makes them feel. The hypothesis of the study is that the coffee-break effects the well-being in a positive way, and that it has a positive effect on how work in general makes the employees feel.

The purpose of this study was to examine how students of the Human Resources and Labour Relations Programme evaluates work applications from Swedish and Somali women. 55 students participated in the study. The respondents were supposed to read a fictitious work and from that, judge four applications from four women where two had Swedish names and two had Somali names. The independent variables were the participants' gender, grade and university (between subject variables) as well as the applicant's name (Swedish vs. Somali) as the within-subject variable.

The purpose of this essay is, using discourse analysis, to define how the Swedish society sees sexuality and how this is conveyed to young people. The questions at issue are; How is the term sexuality defined and delimited? How are the young people described in relation to sexuality? Are young people ascribed to different needs and qualities in relation to sexuality depending on their gender?There is previously a lot of research with great multitude about the sexuality of the youth. The research methods vary but text analysis within the subject area is unusual. The material used in this discourse analysis have been published by normative public institutions.

This paper aims at assessing the relationship between female and male part-time employment and the business cycle in Sweden during the years 1987?2005 using quarterly time-series data and two alternative indicators of the business cycle. It further aims at determining whether the share of women working part-time has changed over time. Key results include that the relationship between the business cycle and female part-time employment is found to be significant and countercyclical. No significant effect is however found for men.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate if gender stereotypes are mediated to children between 0-3 years through books suitable for their age. This thesis concerns books that are available in public libraries. The content will be analysed by using a combination of methods, both content analysis of all the books in our study and a qualitative analysis of a smaller number of these books. With inspiration from both Robert Connell and Yvonne Hirdman and their theories of gender and gender stereotypes, this material was read and we wanted to examine if books for very young children might establish stereotypes. Our analysis showed that many known stereotypes are common in these books.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how young women create their feminine gender positions in relation to their reading. Using qualitative research methods the empirical material has been collected through so called reflexive interviews with eight young women aged 15-17. From their statements the empirical material has been divided into five themes that are important to the young women, as well as to the formulation of the problem. This constitutes the model of analysis. The analysis has been conducted through an examination of these themes from a gender theoretical perspective and through the application of theories about reading and gender.

The gender theory of Judith Butler is based on both philosophical and psychoanalytic notions of the self. Although greatly inspired by both early and contemporary psychoanalytic thinking, Butler has also questioned some of its core notions such as the meaning of gender complementarity and conceptions of desire. In a dialogue in Studies in Gender and Sexuality she discusses these and other theoretical and ethical issues with the influential psychoanalyst and gender theorist Jessica Benjamin. The exchange is a unique example of an attempt at dialogue and theoretical reflection between a prominent contemporary gender theorist and psychoanalyst. It reveals disagreements and theoretical difficulties I will show to be directly attributable to radical differences between Butler's and Benjamin's conceptions of the self.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between mental illness and socioeconomic factors such as education, age and gender among drug users. Descriptive and ANOVA analysis were performed to 68 structured interviews (Addiction Severity Index basic). Analysis addressed associations between drug usage and level of education, age and gender. Results showed gender differences in self-rated mental health with women drug users rating their mental health lower than men. In addition, there was no association between age, educational level and self-rated mental health.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine how the gender system is described in fantasy novels. The theoretical framework is based on Yvonne Hirdman?s theory on gender system, primarily the two basic principles: the principle of dichotomy, of separation between the sexes, and the principle of hierarchy, of man as norm. The method used is idea analysis which is a form of textual analysis.

The aim of this study is to examine the media coverage of gender-neutral marriage from an intersectional perspective ? with particular regard to gender, sexual orientation and religion. By focusing on the spokespeople who appears in the articles we have made an attempt to answer questions regarding who was heard in the debate on gender-neutral marriage and how the homosexual couples are portrayed in relation to the above criteria.The collected material consists of 89 articles, published in 2009, in Swedish newspapers which have been analysed by using quantitative content analysis. Ten articles have also been selected for a critical discourse analysis based on Norman Fairclough?s approach.

Mothers of small children often work part-time in Sweden. Since old age pensions are based on lifetime income, part-time work leads to lower pensions, as long as there is no compensation from non-actuarial benefits such as minimum pensions. In this paper, I investigate whether different components of the Swedish pension system provide incentives for part-time work among women. The analysis is performed through a simulation of future pensions for 9 typical women in a certain cohort. For three levels of education, I compare pensions of women with different labor market participation rates in different growth scenarios.

Det här examensarbetet har syftat till att få svar på hur kvinnor skildras i förhållande till män i mellanstadiets läroböcker i historia. Arbetet började i 1960-talets läroböcker och sträckte sig 50 år framåt i tiden för att kunna svara på frågan hur skildringen av kvinnor har förändrats över tid. Dessutom har läro- och kursplanernas synpunkter på jämställdhet i undervisningen undersökts för att kunna ge ett svar på frågan om hur väl läroböckernas framställning av kvinnor stämmer överens med dessa styrdokuments synpunkter. Arbetet är en kvalitativ textanalys, dock med ett kvantitativt inslag, som har tagit sin utgångspunkt i Hirdmans genussystem och teorier kring den stereotypa kvinnan. Arbetets främsta resultat är att kvinnan till stor del utelämnas från beskrivningarna i läroböckerna samt att hon jämförs med mannen och skildras som antingen mindre fulländad än honom eller som en annorlunda art med andra egenskaper.

In the following essay I have read the drama Natten är dagens mor (The Night is the Day's Mother) by Lars Norén. My main focus has been on the older brother Georg. By using post structuralist gender theories I have sought answers to the following two questions: How is Georg's masculinity constructed and maintained, when seen from a gender perspective? What power structures arise between Georg's and the other men's masculinities? In my analysis I have approached Georg via three perspectives. First, I have by the help of Judith Butler's theory concerning gender performative actions tried to define the men's gender codes.

The central part in all public health work is health promotion and disease preventing actions among the population. Since all public health work includes the whole population, the work has to embrace disabled people as well. Within the disability policies, participation and equality are important goals, which illustrate the importance of a job. In previous studies the positive effects of animal have been detected among persons with disabilities, by better balance, better mobility, larger social network, new knowledge and most of all happiness. The aim of this study was to investigate how people with disabilities experience their health when they are working with animal husbandry at daily activities.