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Ageing Europeans are today healthier than previous generations and often manage to live independently up to a high age. The proportion of people 80 years of age and older has increased significantly, and with high age the risk of multi-illness and dementia increases. Strong urbanisation processes have changed the demographic structure in rural areas, and young women and men have migrated towards the urban areas to study and work, while older persons have remained behind. This demographic challenge of increasing numbers of persons older than 80 years with care needs living in remote rural areas has become a major European social problem. In tackling this dilemma, many European countries have high expectations for eHealth, digitalisation and welfare technology. In this comparative study of policy debates in Italy, Finland and Sweden, we analyse how - between 2009 and 2019 - the issues of eHealth have been articulated in national and regional policies of the three countries with deep differences in terms of digitalisation and health systems, but with similar ageing populations. We identify in the documents three core topics - the role of technology, the rural issue and responsibility for care. These topics are treated in the documents with differences and similarities between the three countries. Beyond the differences and similarities, the documents reveal both a certain techno-enthusiasm about the role of eHealth in the life of the older adults as well as a limited understanding of the complexity (relationally as well as spatially) of the digital landscape of caring for older adults.

In this article, we contrast policy understandings of digital care with older people’s day-to-day digital care. In doing so, we discuss problems relating to deterministic approaches in government policy. Our policy analysis shows that digital care is articulated as an individual practice, and digital technologies as static actors. This bears clear marks of techno-deterministic reasoning. Our ethnographic study demonstrates the ongoing and collective character of older people’s digital care. When policy is not aligned with everyday practice, there is a risk of excluding groups of users. We argue that a socio-technical approach in government policy could contribute to achieving important societal goals.

This study examined the prevalence and consequences of intragroup conflicts for well-being in three women-dominated occupations from a gender perspective. Using survey data from 1299 nurses, teachers, and social workers, we found that task conflict was the most common type of conflict but it was unrelated to well-being. Relationship conflict was negatively associated with vigor and positively associated with employee stress, burnout, and depression. Process conflicts were positively associated with depression. Our findings revealed that women and men in the same occupation experience intragroup conflicts in the same way. Organizations should therefore primarily reduce relationship conflicts to ensure employee well-being.

Practitioner Points:

● Not all types of conflicts at work are destructive. Some types of conflict may in fact be a good thing!

● Task conflict is the most common type of conflict in women-dominated workplaces, but it does not impair employee well-being. Instead, the contesting of ideas may lead to nuanced decisions.

● Managers in women-dominated workplaces should pay close attention to, and try to resolve, relationship conflicts as they may reduce employee well-being.

The rural Swedish north is under reconstruction. The challenges of living and working in the region are dealt with through the regional growth policy area. In this article, the applications that received funds from the EU's regional structural funding programme directed towards the Swedish north are studied. Distributions of such funds are, of course, evaluated and audited by all established rules and regulation. Evaluations that every year conclude that labour market sectors that traditionally employ women get less funding than sectors that employ men and that no significant change in this pattern has been seen over the years. How can this be understood? The funded projects applications are thematically structured using topic modelling, and after that, analysed using deconstructive policy analysis to understand how different subject positions are discursively constructed in the implementation of the regional growth policy. Concluding that, despite the high ambition, the policy that is supposed to enable opportunities for everyone to live and earn a living throughout the entire country, risks instead of being part of recreating established norms and

Debates on gender equality policy in Sweden assume that women’s labor market participation is central to gender equality and should be promoted via special initiatives and programs. This paper examines how gender equality discourses have changed over time, analyzing Swedish state labor market policy in the 1980s and 1990s, special labor market initiatives to eliminate gender segregation and encourage nontraditional gendered work choices, and contemporary state subsidies for paid domestic work (i.e., tax deduction for domestic services). Critically interpreting these reforms reveals consistencies and continuities in how labor market participation is viewed as the key promoter of gender equality, revealing transformations in how gender equality is understood and constructed. A transition is discernible from state-funded programs and reforms to governmental agencies/authorities and state subsidies to promote enterprise and the growth of specific labor market sectors.

The care for older and disabled people has been described as a core area of the Nordic model. The Nordic countries’ welfare model has also been described as women friendly, as women are not forced to make harder choices than men between work and family. The Swedish eldercare system has, during the last several decades, undergone significant changes. Previously, eldercare could be described as universal, meaning a publicly provided, comprehensive, high-quality service available to all citizens according to need and not based on the ability to pay. In later years transformation of eldercare has been influenced by neoliberal politics, which emphasize economic efficiency and cost reduction through competition. Eldercare has become a more diverse multidimensional system, and a private market for home-based eldercare has been created. The numbers of eldercare providers have increased considerably, and new ways of organizing eldercare have been established. In January 2009, the Act on System of Choice in the Public Sector was introduced (in Swedish: Lagen om valfrihetssystem [LOV]). The Act was supposed to provide an opportunity for interested municipalities and county councils to expose their publicly provided services to market competition, and to enable users to choose their providers. This article aims to illustrate how neoliberal reasoning dominated the policy process leading to adoption of the Act on System of Choice in the Public Sector. With the use of a discursive policy analysis the authors specifically explore how neoliberal logic dominated, and also how choice and equality were understood and interpreted in the policy process. They conclude that the neoliberal turn in eldercare claiming to centre on the individual choice of persons in need of care runs the risk of creating unequal care that decentres the eldercare worker and creates precarious work situations.