Mapping the ruling relations of work in rural eldercare intersections of gender, digitalization and the centre–periphery divide

摘要

Highlights ? The overall aim with this article is to shed light on the managers' working conditions in rural eldercare, where the financial vulnerability that characterizes most rural councils in Sweden is very much a factor in their everyday work. ? The study shows how many of the managers we interviewed described their sector as ‘a drain on the public purse’. ? This was not only because of obsolete descriptions of private and public funding, but also because of other power structures, such as the dichotomy of centre and periphery, the position of eldercare in relation to other council services and in relation to issues of gender. ? Women are in the majority in almost all positions in eldercare, and thus women are in charge of planning within and the day-to-day running of the sector. ? To talk of the organization, planning and sociopolitical reform of eldercare is just as much to talk about women's working conditions. ? Several researchers have argued that the neo-liberal restructuring of Western welfare states, following the rise of new public management (NPM), has brought about a broader change in the management of all forms of care, thus renegotiating the care ethic of the Nordic welfare model in toto. ? Using a feminist analysis of the transformation of the public sector, we will illustrate how a general restructuring at the local authority level can have specific consequences for working conditions in rural areas.