Umeå universitets logga

This is a study of sex/gender relations and everyday life in Kiruna - a mining town in the north of Sweden where people began to settle around 1900.The focus is on various aspects of the situation for young women and men and on analyses of changes in the concepts of femininity and masculinity, the social construction of sexuality and the norm system that regulates sex/gender relations.The study has a qualitative approach. Different types of empirical data are used but the essential material consists of interviews. The thesis is structured in five parts with a prologue and an epilogue. Theoretical starting-points, aims, methods and empirical material are presented in part I. Descriptions and analysis of various periods are dealt with in the three following parts. Changes in sex/gender relations are summarized and analysed in part V.The contribution of women was very important in the building up of Kiruna during the settlement period. The roles of the sexes were clearly defined regarding work responsibilities and moral rules and remained so until the middle of the century.The bounderies between what were considered women's and men's spheres became less rigid during the fifties. Young women were less stricly supervised but the norm system concerning sexual relations was still very strict. This is an ongoing process that manifests itself in changes in the norm system and in sex/gender relations. These bounderies between women's and men's worlds, between femininity and masculinity, are more varied and open but in some respects more diffuse and contradictory. The divison of labour is obvious both in the labour market and in education after comprehensive school. Among young people this does not seem to affect the ideal of equal opportunity - the generally accepted ideology - as it is mainly connected with the divison of labour in the family. Central to the negotiations between the sexes are matters concerning accessibility for the needs of others, the use of time, and ongoing changes in the traditional division between men's dependence on and women's responsibility for care and attention.