• Gendering Practices and Transformations at Work
• Gendering Organisation Cultures and New Information Technology in Manufacturing and Service Companies
• Transformations, Power and Gender at White-Collar Workplaces
• The Reconciliation of Work and Family Life
• Gender, Labour Market and Economic Restructuring in Finland 1970-1990
• Gender, Citizenship and Information Society
• The Use of Family Leave

The research outlined in this application has its roots in 1) research on transformations and changing trends in service sector work; 2) the theoretical discussion on the relationship between gendering practices and transformations at work; and 3) the methodological discussion on the research perspectives opened up by the ethnographic approach on the organizational level. The research lies at the intersection of the sociology of work, social psychology, organization studies, and gender studies.

The aim of the empirical research is to study an emerging sector branch in Finland, that is call centres, and to compare the Finnish case with developments internationally. My earlier work on the changes in the service sector from the mid-1980s onwards provides a useful basis for relating these new developments with longer-term tendencies in terms of gender at work. At the same time, this background will help to shed light on possible future tendencies.

In theoretical and methodological terms, the aim is to continue ongoing research and to examine in more detail the intersections and dynamics between gendered structures, gendering processes, and the individual and collective identities of women and men at work.

Duration

1.8.2000-31.7.2002

Funding

Academy of Finland (grant for post-doctoral research position)

Tutkimus liittyy kolmeen keskusteluyhteyteen, jotka ovat seuraavat: 1) muutokset ja muutossuunnat palvelualojen työssä; 2) teoreettinen keskustelu työelämän sukupuolistavien käytäntöjen ja työelämän muutosten yhteyksistä ja 3) organisaatiotasoinen etnografinen tutkimusote. Tutkimus sijoittuu työnsosiologian, sosiaalipsykologian, organisaatiotutkimuksen ja naistutkimuksen alueille ja välimaastoon.

Empiirisesti tarkoituksena on tutkia kasvavaa palvelusektorin aluetta Suomessa, puhelinpalveluyrityksiä ja –yksiköitä (call centereitä) ja suhteuttaa niitä kansainvälisiin kehityslinjoihin. Aikaisempi tutkimukseni (alkaen 1980-luvun alkupuolelta) toimihenkilötyön muutoksista tarjoaa hyvän pohjan muutoksien suhteuttamiselle pitkällä aikavälillä sukupuolen näkökulmasta. Samalla se antaa mahdollisuuden arvioida muutossuuntia tulevaisuudessa.

Teoreettisesti ja metodologisesti tavoitteena on jatkaa tutkimusta työelämän muutosten ja sukupuolistavien käytäntöjen välisistä suhteista. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on jatkaa työelämän sukupuolen mukaisten rakenteiden, työelämän sukupuolistavien prosessien sekä työssä olevien naisten ja miesten yksilöllisten ja kollektiivisten identeettien keskinäisten leikkauskohtien ja niiden välisen dynamiikan tarkastelua.

Aika:

1.8.2000 – 31.7.2002
 

Rahoittaja:

Suomen Akatemia, tutkijatohtorin määräraha

Project Profile

The project understands organisational  social  practices as forms that are produced by gendering organisational cultures. It aims at analysing how organisational cultures, gendering practices and informatisation of work in manufacturing and service organisations intertwine. We are sensitive to the fact that women and men meet the transformation of work in different positions. Thus, the impacts of transformation are different on women’s and men’s jobs.

Informatisation of work is seen as a penetrating process in work. The need for co-operation deepens and expands in the work of different hierarchical groups and between them. In addition, the creation of knowledge, and both the process and product innovations are getting more and more crucial. Also, the deployment of integrated ICT is growing in handling the flows of information in organisations, among them and in their relationships with customers. However, according to our first results, the dominance of men and the subordinate position of women seem to be reproduced at the information-intensive work as well.

Tasks

To compare the trajectories of manufacturing and service companies in the light of intensive case studies. Research methods consist of both a personnel survey and interviews as well as observations of work. Furthermore, the project applies an interactive approach. Based on the personnel survey, each partner company received an analysis of its own profile on the research themes. The project also organised for the companies a joint two-day LOM-styled work conference to develop an innovative and grounded understanding of the future work competence.

Funding

Finnish Work Environment Fund

Duration

1999 – 2001

Researchers

Riitta Lavikka, Päivi Korvajärvi, Heljä Franssila, Satu Honkala, Tanja Helle

Co-operation
Mobile Boundaries of  the Information Society  project,
Information Society, Work and the Generation of New Forms of Social Exclusion project
 

Although there have been some numerical changes over the past couple of decades in occupational gender segregation in Finland, the overall picture has remained very much the same. This study is concerned with the practices and processes in and through which white-collar employees and their superiors produce, reproduce and break the divisions which cause women and men to be slotted into different locations and hierarchies at workplaces.

In theoretical terms, the purpose of the study is to analyse doing gender, that is ongoing gendering activities in working life. Variations in doing gender and in their preconditions are studied in different work organizations. The following questions are addressed:

• In what ways is gender done in white-collar workplaces?
• How do the different practices and processes of doing and defining gender reproduce the gendered hierarchic divisions in organizations?
• How do the same practices and processes include both women's and men's consent to the hierarchic orders of organizations?
• How do the transformational processes of work and work organizations shape the gendered orders of the organizations?

A European Social Fund Project

The experiences of Finland and the other Nordic countries as pioneers in women's participation in the labour market and in developing the infrastructures that facilitate the work-family interface, has attracted much interest elsewhere in Europe.

The aims of this project are to:

• further develop gender equality in working life participation and in the work done in families;
• facilitate employees' adaptation to changes in work organizations by analysing the practices, needs, preconditions for and obstacles to the reconciliation of work and family in different kinds of workplaces and in different phases of family life;
• discover innovative means of reconciling working life and family in Finnish and European workplaces;
• develop such means and to carry out experiments at workplaces;
• increase public awareness of these means.

• the labour market effects of childcare leaves on individual, on workplace and on labour market levels;
• the needs, preconditions for and obstacles to men's and women's use of childcare leaves;
• how family organizes working life?

The target groups are employers as well as female and male employees in female and male-dominated and gender-equal workplaces that vary in terms of size, sector, working time patterns and organization of work.

The project started up in September 1995 and will be completed by 1999.

The project consists of four independent subprojects. The subprojects are carried out by Stakes (National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health), Work Research Centre at University of Tampere, Institute of Occupational Health, and Psychology Consultancy Tunne Ihminen. Stakes coordinates the project which is led by Dr. Minna Salmi.

 The study addresses the fundamental question of how gender is built into the structures of the labour market and, in particular, how the gendered division of labour and the gendered structures of the labour market have changed in Finland with the economic restructuring and modernization of society. The forms and changes in men's and women's employment and labour markets will be analysed in the context of occupational segregation. The analysis also extends to certain occupations where there has been a dramatic change in the level of sex-typing.

Research tasks are the following:

• to study how the change in industrial structure, the growth of the welfare state and the increased participation of women in the labour force have affected the dynamics of employment and occupational segregation
• to find how the forms and changes in the gendered structures of the labour market affected the hierarchic differences and wage differentials between men and women
• to clarify how segregation is reproduced in the context of change
• to highlight different characteristics of the dynamic change of segregation and of gender as a socially produced relation.

Project Profile

The research focus lies on the practices of citizenship in information society, and the interconnection and the mutual shaping of gender and information technology by collecting empirical material (interviews of people in villages and neighbourhood centres, interviews of institutional actors and authorities, documents produced by them and media texts), in North Karelia, on the Eastern border of Finland. The practices of citizenship consist of agency, subjectivity, community, locality, institutional practices (that limit/enable agency) and broad social relations. The citizenship and information technology use and development are seen to intertwine with the self, community, local practices and broad social relations. The research questions include: Do women have a possibility for equality and difference in the practices of Information Society citizenship? How is the expertise constructed and reconstructed within the practices of the citizenship of Information Society?

Funding

Academy of Finland, post-doctoral research position (Marja Vehviläinen 1998-2001
Ministry of Industry and Commerce Technology Research program (Tietotekniikka ja kansalaistoiminta - Citizens activity and information technology project) and it has also employed Johanna Uotinen and Sari Tuuva (1998-1999).

Researchers

Marja Vehviläinen, Johanna Uotinen, Sari Tuuva
 

Co-operation:
 

Mobile Boundaries of the Information Society: Restructuring Practices in Working Life

The project studies the practices of working life and information technology. It is funded by the Academy of Finland and co-ordinated by Tuula Heiskanen

Information Technology, Media and Cultural Interpretations

Studies the cultural interpretations of information technology and media in people’s lives in the settings of academic, youth and rural village cultures.

The project is funded by the Academy of Finland  and it  is co-ordinated by Marja Vehviläinen and Seppo Knuuttila, Universities of Joensuu and Tampere. Virpi Oksman, Sari Tuuva and  Johanna Uotinen are the doctoral students supervised in the project.
 

Information Technology, Economy and Cultural Interpretations

Information Technology , Economy and Cultural Interpretations is partly research project, and partly an educational project.  The group studies the practices of information society (e.g. information strategies) of administrators and experts and the social and cultural spaces that enable the differences of agency.

The project is co-ordinated by Marja Vehviläinen and Päivi Eriksson, University of Tampere. The project meets in doctoral seminars and it has published the book: Päivi Eriksson & Marja Vehviläinen (Eds.) Tietoyhteiskunta seisakkeella: teknologia, strategiat ja paikalliset tulkinnat (Information Society Stop: technology, strategies and local interpretations, in Finnish), anthology, SoPhi, Jyväskylä, 1999.

Family leave – maternity, paternity, parental and home care leave – help families to reconcile work and family life. In the 1990s Finland faced mass unemployment and a growth in temporary employment. Along with other social policy cutbacks the compensation levels of family leave benefits and allowances were reduced. The aim of the project is to investigate, using national register-based statistical data, how the changes in the labour market and social policy affected the use of family leave and the ways of organising livelihood, participation in paid work and child care in the family.

The key research questions of the project are:

• how parents’ status in the labour market, the structure of the family, changes in family leave and unemployment benefits, regional unemployment and child day care situation in municipalities affected the overall use and the duration of the use of family leave?
• what factors promoted or prevented fathers’ use of family leave?

Funding: The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and Ministry of Labour

Duration: 1.11.1997 - 30.4.1998

Partners: The European Social Fund project ‘Combining Work and Family Life’ coordinated by the Na-tional Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES).