DAISIE - Country report: Sweden

The DAISIE project explores the gendered impacts of policies and practices aimed at extending working life (EWL) in five contrasting national settings (the Czech Republic, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK), using a mixed methods research design inspired by insights from lifecourse and gender studies. The project addresses two significant and timely issues: labour market participation in later life and the influence of labour market and family trajectories on the experiences of older workers in different national and occupational contexts. This report explores the issue of extending working life in the Swedish context. It begins by discussing the Swedish gender equality politics, which follows by a presentation of the pension system, pension trends and obstacles against an extended working life. The processes towards an extended working life illustrates the difficulties in implementing gender equality in practice. In the Swedish debate on raised retirement age, older women’s and men’s equal opportunity to work into old age is not identified as a core issue, although this is an essential goal of the general gender equality policy in Sweden. Nor has the gender segregated labour market been emphasised to any great extent, despite being at the heart of gender inequalities in terms of wages, pensions and sick leave and parental leave. It is further shown that the argument for an extended working life is mainly based on demographic statistics and economic arguments about the sustainability of the Swedish welfare and pension systems, while organisational factors, such as ageism and age norms in work organisations have not highlighted as a real obstacle to older people’s participation in working life. Finally, it is argued that the Swedish gender equality project also has to include the older age groups and that the question of extended working life is an example of contemporary gender equality issues.