Social well‐being and gender: post‐Soviet Estonia and the welfare state Finland

Abstract

Recent research has pointed out the gender‐blindness of mainstream discussion on social well‐being, social policy and citizenship. In this article the differences between men's and women's well‐being in Estonia and Finland were studied according to the subjects' perceived stress symptoms within their work‐family arrangements. While paid work is expected to be the responsibility of both genders in both countries, unpaid work is expected to be the main responsibility of women in Estonia, and the shared responsibility of both men and women in Finland. The results support the hypotheses about the different gendered outcomes of social policy in these countries. The greater load of unpaid work of the employed Estonian women was connected with a higher level of stress. The fact that the Finnish women perceived less stress than their Estonian counterparts and that the difference between women's and men's stress level in two‐earner families with children was smaller in Finland than in Estonia, supports previous research illustrating the more women‐friendly character of Finnish social policy.