Hur många händer kan en undersköterska ha? - En studie om undersköterskors arbetsvillkor och arbetsmiljö inom hemtjänsten under Coronapandemin

Sammanfattning: This master´s thesis examines the working conditions and working environment of assistant nurses within the home care service of the elderly during and before the Coronavirus pandemic in Sweden. Before the pandemic studies showed that care work performed by assistant nurses lack recognition of how hard and heavy their work is and at the same time that their wages are low in relation to other occupational categories. These injustices have been highlighted during the pandemic and the socio-politic discourse has been about how important their work is for our society but there hasn’t been any large form of redistribution. The study includes the experience and voices of six women working within the Swedish home care service who have worked through the pandemic, caring for and treating the most vulnerable people within our society with their own lives at risk. Their voices serve as the base for this feminist study about care as wage-work alongside with Nancy Frasers theory (2003) about recognition and redistribution to accomplish genderjustice. The study concludes that the working conditions and working environment have been more stressful and heavier during the pandemic due to high absence and having to put on protective material with no extra time for it. The consequences have been an increased stress of conscience for the assistant nurses not being able to care for the elderly in accordance with what Kari Waerness (1984) calls the rationality of caring. The study also concludes that recognition without redistribution isn´t enough for the care work of assistant nurses and further shows that these two injustices need to be fought at the same time in order to achieve genderjustice just as Fraser pinpoints.