In today?s society there is an ongoing debate concerning gender distribution amongst the top executives and there is a clear distinction between the men and women in leading positions. The reason for this can be because men and women to a certain degree conduct leadership differently. It is said that men are more focused on task oriented leadership while women seem to focus on a relation oriented and more interactive leadership. A leader?s success could be due to his or her ability to set up and use a network.

 The aim of this study was to examine how young people, who have been treated for their misuse and/or to learn to handle a parent's misuse, portrayed the network's implication in their wishes about improving their lives, to make new choices. The network included members of nuclear family, relatives, important persons at school/work and friends. The ?professional network? (therapists and social workers) also became a part in the young people's life during a period. The main issues of this study concerned differences in their experiences of the young persons´ network relationships in before, during and after completed treatment.

The purpose of this essay was to illustrate professionals? reflections on the concept early attachment between guardian and infant, within different family support activities, and how professionals encourage early attachment between guardian and infant. The mental health state of infants is an important field of knowledge to explore. Attachment between guardian and infant is of the utmost importance for the development of children. The questions we had were: What contains the concept early attachment between guardian and infant from a professional point of view? Which factors have influence on early attachment between guardian and infant? How do professionals work with early attachment between guardian and infant? The essay is a qualitative study based on six interviews with two female district nurses, two female social welfare secretaries, a female psychologist and a female social worker.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine value creation in networks. Based on a case study of Livebookings Network, an online booking service. This thesis has an explorative nature. As a theoretical framework we use theories on value and network dynamics. By combining these theories we develop an operationalized framework that we use to analyze our empirical findings.

This study used a qualitative interview design to explore the experiences of seven Swedish female elite athletes and their career retirement. The athletes were engaged in three different sports; track and field (athletics), handball and golf and five of them are former professional or semi-professional athletes. The process of their athletic role exit was based on the theoretical findings of Ebaugh (1988) and her four phases: First Doubts, Seeking Alternatives, The Turning Point and Creating the Ex-Role. The findings reveal that for these female former elite athletes Seeking Alternatives already starts before the First Doubts and that possibly the athletes at an early stage have insights of the discontinuity of their athletic career. The importance of transferring their role residual to future paths in life was stressed among the female athletes in order to be able to have a smooth transition process.

AbstractThe purpose of this thesis is to examine the professional female members of a board in listed companies. During the 21st century the issue of female quotation into the executive boards was discussed in both the media and politically due to womens underrepresentation in these contexts.The main purpose of this thesis is to examine the professional female members of boards stories of the role models they have, what characteristics have evolved, the views of others, and the self image. In addition, we want to investigate how women perceive themselves in a male-dominated field to identify how the female identity is created at work.Through a qualitative research in the form of personal interviews, we have gathered empirical material that forms the basis of our results. The answers from the interviews have been analyzed with the help of relevant theories and a social constructionist approach throughout the thesis. For our theoretical approach, we primarily chose symbolic interactionism, identity theories, and concepts such as the glass ceiling and gender strategies to analyze the data.The result of the survey shows that there are many elements that play into how women form their identities.

The purpose of this study was to examine how employees perceive female chief executiveofficers and if any significant differences between what leadership-skills female and maleco-employees choose to express about female leaders can be observed. The survey isperformed as a qualitative study where three companies within the retail marketparticipated. We collected our empirical data by interviews and observations and usedsocial constructivist theory to look at how individuals construct their subjective view ofreality. The result showed, among others, that female employees often use traditional maleskills to describe the strengths of their female chief, whereas male employees emphasizesmore female skills such as unpretentious and open-minded..

The purpose with our essay was to examine what favourable factors there are for women to get out of drug abuse and from a gender aspect interpret how these factors are used in the treatment of female drug-addicts, regarded from the treatment personnel view. The questions we have focused on are: What are the favourable factors for women in the way out of the addiction. How can the use of favourable factors be interpreted from a gender aspect. In what way is the knowledge about these favourable factors used in the drug abuse treatment.To fulfil the purpose whit our examination and to get answers to our questions we performed an explorative examination and applied a qualitative method in the form of a half structured interview with five persons.The main features of the results in our examination were that unisexual treatment, the group and the friendship between women, children and pregnancy and professional and private social network were considered as the favourable factors for the women out of their addiction. Certain factors were used in the treatment as a way to socialize or resocialize the female drug-addicts to predominant social models of how a woman should be like..

The purpose of this study was to examine parenthood of young mothers from a professional point of view. The professionals work in a medium-sized city in Sweden and they represent different professions to give a broad perspective of the subject. The questions in the study were: What were the advantages of being a young mother of today and were there any problems with being a young mother, from the professionals perspective? What role did young mothers network and family play, from a professional point of view? From a professional point of view, how well did society handle young parenthood? How do the professionals handle the young mothers they met? Studies with reference to professionals' thoughts and expectations of young mothers were few, therefore the professionals were given a central position in this study. A qualitative method was chosen, for this study.

This essay discusses sentiments underlying choices to sing in women's choir. The focus is on the female choir La Cappella from Uppsala, which is run at a professional level to constitute one of the premier choirs in the country. The La Cappella members and their conductor participated in a survey with questions about how they view their own role as a singer or conductor in a choir. The questions that this paper is based on are the following: Why choose to sing in the choir? How do the Community and the social network between women affect their decision to sing in a women´s choir? Has the sound of the chorus played an important role in the choice of choir? Interwoven in the text, I discuss and compare La Cappella with choir Flora, a Finnish-Swedish women's choir..

The purpose of this essay was to examine female and male nursing students expectations and goals referring to the nursing profession from a gender perspective and examining the students reasons to apply for nursing school. A descriptive study with qualitative design was implemented. Data acquisition was made through interviewing ten nurse students, five male and five female. The interview material were analysed in accordance with Kvale?s method of analyzing.

The aim of this study is to examine whether the image of the stereotype librarian has created conflict in young librarians´ personal identity and/or professional identity and if this has shown in their choice of clothes? Our purpose was to find out, with the help of their choice of clothes, the young librarians view of themselves as individuals and professional librarians. We have searched for the answers to the following questions: - Do young librarians experience that clothing at their workplace has any significance and if so, what do they want to signal with their clothing? - Do they experience that clothing and appearance has any impact on their personal and professional identity? - How do they relate, by their choice of clothes, to the stereotype images of the librarian? We have performed qualitative interviews with eleven young female librarians. As a theoretical framework we have used ideas and concepts from different areas of research; semiotics, social psychology, business administration and ethnology.

The aim of this thesis is to study a job-searching process and elements that affects it. The elements I have focused on are gender, class and social network. The study is based on interviews and a survey study with students from the educational program of Social work (Socialomsorgsutbildningen), that graduated 3 years ago. Through the survey I have examined their social-background and their job-searching process. The interviews are the main focus in the study.

How do probation inspectors describe their female clients and female offenders? Are there any discrepancies in treatment between male and female clients? In what way is the social interaction between female clients and inspectors constructed and described?  These are the issues we have explored in this study. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with a total of nine probation inspectors; six women and three men, were used in order to examine the probation inspectors? constructions of clients and the construction of interaction between them. By applying Foucault?s theory of power relations, Hirdman?s gender theory and Olsson?s theory of preconceptions when analyzing the results five themes were identified; descriptions of the work of the female client, descriptions of the interaction with the female client, descriptions of the female offender, descriptions of backgrounds why women commit crimes and descriptions of society's view on the female offender.

 The purpose of this case study was to view if there were any differences and similarities between Swedish and American female leaders, with focus on the Swedish female leaders. We also wanted to find out if the American female leaders had problem whit the classcelling.Our case study is a quality method, because we wanted to reach the dep't that quality methods can reach. We interviewed four Swedish female leaders and tried to get in touch whit American female leaders but whit out any success. So instead we analyzed already existing research about the American female leadership. Our result showed that there were some differences between the two countries; in the same time we also found similarities. The classcelling tends to exist more in Sweden than in the US.   .