An Assessment of Two Parenting Training Manuals Used in Swedish Parenting Interventions

In Sweden, all parents of children aged 0–18 years are entitled to attend free parenting courses as part of a national strategy presented by the Government in 2009. This broad parental support welfare strategy is expected to fulfil the intentions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In this study, two parenting training manuals were analysed: the Canadian Connect program, based on attachment theory, and the Swedish ABC program, based on social learning theory. The results indicate that the manuals use strategies that can both hinder and support children's rights, regardless of rhetoric of children's best interests.     

Stagnation only on the surface? The implications of skill and family responsibilities for the gender wage gap in Sweden, 1974–2010

The wage differential between women and men persists in advanced economies despite the inflow of women into qualified occupations in recent years. Using five waves of the Swedish Level‐of‐Living Survey (LNU), this paper explores the gender wage gap in Sweden during the 1974–2010 period overall and by skill level. The empirical analyses showed that the general gender wage gap has been nearly unchanged for the past 30 years. However, the gender difference in wage in less qualified occupations fell considerably, whereas the gender pay gap remained stable for men and women in qualified occupations. The larger significance of family responsibilities for wages in qualified occupations is one likely explanation for this result.     

Women under protection – in hiding from violent men

In Sweden in 2007, 11,047 people, out of a population of around nine million were living under at-risk conditions requiring protective measures for their safety. Sixty per cent were women, most of them hiding from men who had battered them and were still threatening and stalking them. In this research and intervention study, a group of women in hiding were given different kinds of support and 23 women were interviewed. These women struggle to make a living, work or study, and their finances are extremely strained. Their social networks/interactions are nonexistent. Living under constant threat and insecurity has an adverse impact on the women's health. The community is obliged, for economic and security reasons, to support battered women. There are still severe shortcomings with regard to security. One recommendation is the institution of personal protection officers, i.e. specially trained social service caseworkers able to support the woman once protection measures have been decided.     

Intersectional Approaches in Health‐Risk Research: A Critical Review

The overall aim of this article is to explore how the intersectional approach is used in health‐risk research. The concept has been recognized in health‐risk research since the early 2000s, but not as much as in the broader field of health‐inequality studies. However, in the past 5 years, Social Science and Medicine has published a series of review articles that argue for the necessity of bringing intersectional perspectives to the field of health‐risk studies more generally and quantitative health‐risk research in particular. Asking what it means for health‐risk researchers to practise intersectionality shows the implications of translating a theoretical approach across fields and disciplines. When applying intersectional theory in relation to health‐risks, the theoretical conceptualization of health and risk are often very limited and treated as fixed categories – something that becomes problematic when taken within an intersectional framework. This does not mean that this work is unimportant, but rather that the link between theoretically driven intersectionality and empirical‐focused health research is weak. In order to overcome the dividing lines of health‐risk research and intersectionality, we argue for a new approach that echoes the ‘doing gender’ of gender studies: doing risk.     

Women's entrepreneurship,neoliberalism and economic justice in the postfeminist era: A discourse analysis of policy change in Sweden

Since the early 1990s, there has been investment in women's entrepreneurship policy (WEP) in Sweden, which continued until 2015. During the same period, Sweden assumed neoliberal policies that profoundly changed the position of women within the world of work and business. The goals for WEP changed as a result, from entrepreneurship as a way to create a more equal society, to the goal of unleashing women's entrepreneurial potential so they can contribute to economic growth. To better understand this shift we approach WEP as a neoliberal governmentality which offers women ‘entrepreneurial’ or ‘postfeminist’ subject positions. The analysis is inspired by political theorist Nancy Fraser who theorized the change as the displacement of socioeconomic redistribution in favour of cultural recognition, or identity politics. We use Fraser's concepts in a discourse analysis of Swedish WEP over two decades, identifying two distinct discourses and three discursive displacements. Whilst WEP initially gave precedence to a radical feminist discourse that called for women's collective action, this was replaced by a postfeminist neoliberal discourse that encouraged individual women to assume an entrepreneurial persona, start their own business, compete in the marketplace and contribute to economic growth. The result was the continued subordination of women business owners, but it also obscured or rendered structural problems/solutions, and collective feminist action, irrelevant.     

Bayesian kernel projections for classification of high dimensional data

A Bayesian multi-category kernel classification method is proposed. The algorithm performs the classification of the projections of the data to the principal axes of the feature space. The advantage of this approach is that the regression coefficients are identifiable and sparse, leading to large computational savings and improved classification performance. The degree of sparsity is regulated in a novel framework based on Bayesian decision theory. The Gibbs sampler is implemented to find the posterior distributions of the parameters, thus probability distributions of prediction can be obtained for new data points, which gives a more complete picture of classification. The algorithm is aimed at high dimensional data sets where the dimension of measurements exceeds the number of observations. The applications considered in this paper are microarray, image processing and near-infrared spectroscopy data.     

Do cows belong in nature? The cultural basis of agriculture in Sweden and Australia

Within the now extensive recent literature on cultures of nature, agriculture has received less attention than might have been expected given its threshold role in transforming human relations with the earth and with plants and animals. The concept and practice of agriculture can be understood as central to the emergence and maintenance of the culture/nature dichotomy within Western thought and practice. In this paper we use the comparative cases of Sweden and Australia to examine the differential and contingent positioning of agriculture with respect to that which is understood as nature. Broadly speaking, some parts of agriculture are understood to belong to nature in Sweden through a long history. This is not the case in Australia, where the short agricultural history is positioned in contrast to nature. This affects the way in which biodiversity and environmental protection takes place - in Sweden as part of farming, - in Australia in spite of it. We argue that these cultural differences have been more important than generally recognised in debates over multifunctional agriculture. We discuss the environmental management implications of the two different models in a context made more dynamic by climate change.     

Falling through the social safety net? Analysing non-take-up of minimum income benefit and monetary social assistance in Austria

Non-take-up of means tested benefits is a widespread phenomenon in European welfare states. The paper assesses whether the reform that replaced the monetary social assistance benefit by the minimum income benefit in Austria in 2010/11 has succeeded in increasing take up rates. We use EU-SILC register data together with the tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD/SORESI. The results show that the reform led to a significant decrease of non-take-up from 53 to 30% in terms of the number of households and from 51 to 30% in terms of expenditure. Following the three-t's (threshold, trigger, and trade-off) introduced by Van Oorschot, estimates of a two-stage Heckman selection model as well as expert interviews indicate that the taken measures include both threshold and trade-off characteristics. Elements such as the higher degree of anonymity within the claiming process, the provision of health insurance, binding minimum standards, the limitation of the maintenance obligations, new regulations related to the liquidation of wealth, as well as the general coverage of the benefit reform in the media and in public discussions led to an improved access to the benefit.     

Governance,Accountability, and Organizational Development: Eldercare Unit Managers’ and Local Politicians’ Experiences of and Responses to State Supervision of Swedish Eldercare

This article explores how local politicians and care unit managers in Swedish eldercare experience and respond to state supervision (SSV). Twelve politicians and twelve managers in 15 previously inspected municipalities were interviewed about their experiences of and reactions to SSV in relation to their views of care quality and routines in eldercare practice. The findings indicate that local managers and political chairs perceived SSV in eldercare positively at a superficial level but were critical of and disappointed with specific aspects of it. In terms of (a) governance, chairs and managers said SSV strengthened implementation of national policies via local actors, but they were critical of SSV’s narrow focus on control and flaws in eldercare practice. With regard to (b) accountability, SSV was seen as limited to accountability for finances and systemic performance, and regarding (c) organizational development, SSV was seen as limited to improving routines and compliance with legislation, while local definitions of quality are broader than that. In general, local actors regarded SSV as improving administrative aspects and routines in practice but ignoring the relational content of eldercare quality.     

Barriers to substance use disorder treatment in a sub-acute setting

ABSTRACT

With the changing times, it is essential integrate behavioral health within the primary care of patients. The need is based on the research that links a number of health issues being directly to substance use and mental health diagnosis. With the current opioid epidemic there is a need to address substance use disorders when treating patients in different health care settings. Despite the necessity of integrated care, there are barriers to addressing addiction in sub-acute care settings. With the lack of buy-in from the patients and health care providers and the stigma surrounding addiction it is time to address the barriers that prevents integration of care where it is most needed.