The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Rebecca Selberg

Rebecca Selberg

Docent | Senior lecturer

Rebecca Selberg

Nursing in Times of Neoliberal Change: An Ethnographic Study of Nurses' Experiences of Work Intensification

Author

  • Rebecca Selberg

Summary, in English

The aim of this article is to analyze how nurses respond to and act upon neoliberal transformations of work. The article identifies and explores those transformations considered by my informants, nurses working in public sector hospital wards, as central to changing conditions of work and experiences of work intensifications. It further analyzes nurses’ responses toward these transformations and locates these responses within a particular form of femininity evolving from rationalities of care, the working conditions within the organization, and experiences of care work, studied here through a class and gender informed analysis of care work and work intensifications. By using ethnographic data to explore issues of work intensification in the public sector, the article contributes to a deepened understanding of effects of welfare state transformation on care workers, as well as continuities and change in processes of exploitation and worker adaptation involved in the everyday production of welfare services.



The article is organized as follows. First, I will describe changes in the Swedish healthcare sector, focusing on New Public Management (NPM). In the succeeding section I outline the analytical frame of the article, focusing on gendered aspects of the conditions of labor processes in public sector care work. I then go on to describe the methodology. The remaining part of the article is an analysis based on an empirical study of ward nurses and their experiences of changing working conditions in a Swedish hospital.

Department/s

  • Department of Gender Studies

Publishing year

2013

Language

English

Pages

9-35

Publication/Series

Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies

Volume

3

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies

Topic

  • Work Sciences

Keywords

  • gender
  • nursing
  • Swedish healthcare
  • work intensification
  • care work
  • emotional labor

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2245-0157