Rebecca Selberg

Background

I earned my PhD at Linnaeus University, Växjö. The thesis, which is available for purchase online, is called Femininity at Work: Gender, Labour, and Changing Relations of Power in a Swedish Hospital (for a description of the book, visit http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0950017015569834 )

I have been a member of the teaching staff at the Department of Gender Studies since 2013, where I am also Director of Studies.

Research Areas

• Work and organisation
• Public Sector, healthcare
• Emotional labour
• Management regimes
• Political economy

Ongoing Research Projects

I am currently involved in two research projects funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working life and Welfare.

The first one is based on Hirschman’s (1970) model of exit, voice and loyalty, and explores employee turnover among nurses and social workers in the Swedish public sector. Together with Magnus Sandberg (Faculty of Medicine) and Paula Mulinari (Malmö University), I collect survey-, interview- and observational data on working conditions, management regimes and employee responses. The aim is to understand why nurses and social workers report higher turnover rates and workforce attrition. The project is guided by an intersectional perspective, meaning we study the role of gender, class, ethnicity and age in choosing exit, voice, or loyalty. The project runs through 2020.  https://sortiochprotest.com

The other project starts during 2019 and explores voluntary part-time work. Mimmi Barmark, Department of Sociology, is PI and together we will collect survey-, register based- and interview data to analyse the effects of part-time work on different groups of workers. Do part-time workers experience increased well-being and greater life satisfaction? And if so, what circumstances, including social position, material life conditions and values, contribute to determining the outcomes of part-time work? 

I have a third project that deals with nail salons. I’m interested in labour processes, working conditions, new forms of labour and consumption and ethnic nisches on the Swedish labour market. This project is based on interview data.