If not negotiation, then what? Gender equality and the organization of everyday life in Swedish couples

Lars Evertsson,Charlott Nyman

doi:10.5964/ijpr.v3isupp1.68

Lars Evertsson, Charlott Nyman

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5964/ijpr.v3isupp1.68

Copy DOI

Abstract

Freed from the bonds of traditional gendered norms, responsibilities and obligations, it has been argued that negotiation is a key concept for understanding how modern couples organize their common life together. Interviews with Swedish couples cause us to question this assumption. In this article we argue that negotiations are relatively unusual in couple relationships. We found that couples seldom experience the reason, room space or need to negotiate. This can in part be understood from the perspective of seeing everyday life as a matter of practical coordination, i.e. as something we strive to master rather than something we try to change or critically reflect upon. We found that routines and rituals were a guiding force in how couples organize their everyday lives. “Doing gender”, “doing couple”, external circumstances and agreement were all central aspects in making the everyday lives of the couples we interviewed work.

Highlights

Couple relationships in high modernity have often been characterized as democratic and gender equal
The few examples of negotiation that we found suggest that negotiation is not about the day-to-day organization of everyday life, for example who cooks, cleans or takes the children to activities
We found that negotiations, when they occur, tended to address larger fundamental questions related to the very nature and form of a couple’s relationship and life together

Summary

Introduction

Couple relationships in high modernity have often been characterized as democratic and gender equal. The Scandinavian countries have often been described as having advanced the farthest in this regard (Björnberg, 1997; Ellingsæter, 1998; Lewis, 1992; Roman & Vogler, 1999; SOU, 2005:66) This modern family has been described as a “negotiating family” (Beck, 1992; Stacey, 1990) since negotiation has often been seen as a key concept for understanding how they organize their common life together (Bauman, 2003; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995; Giddens, 1992). Given this picture of the modern family, we wanted to investigate negotiation in Swedish couples. We had initially expected to find that negotiation was a central aspect of how Swedish couples arrive at ways of organizing their everyday lives The question we ask here is how, if not through negotiation, do couples make decisions and arrive at ways of organizing their lives together?

Methods

Results

Conclusion