Can the Act on System of Choice Empower Women? An interview study of female entrepreneurs' experiences on the Swedish homecare market

Sammanfattning: When the Act on System of choice was implemented on the Swedish homecare market in 2009, there seemed to be an assumed understanding that by increasing competition on the eldercare market through privatization it would create better opportunities for women. Entrepreneurship was phrased as a solution for empowering and emancipating women in breaking out from a fixed role in low-status professions. The law was said to provide big opportunities for women; however, the literature review conducted on homecare and female entrepreneurship showed that small businesses and female entrepreneurs have a hard time establishing businesses on the homecare market, contradicting the established aim of the law. Thus, the aim of this study is to illustrate how women who have chosen to start entrepreneurial businesses in homecare experience female empowerment understood as female entrepreneurship. The study highlights how female entrepreneurs at the homecare market could experience empowerment. Shaping the primary research question of: ‘How can LOV empower women when it comes to female entrepreneurship on the homecare market?' To answer this a textual study and an interview study was conducted. The textual study was a content analysis of the government bill, and the interview study was done through qualitative interviews with female entrepreneurs on the homecare market. Drawing on the theoretical framework of manifest, latent and dysfunctions of the law along with gendered capitalism the study showed that the male hegemonic structures shaping the marketization mindset of profit, expansion, and efficiency prevent empowerment from happening. The unequal nature of the homecare market itself because of the skewed power structure between the female entrepreneurs and the municipalities turns the process of competition testing and the Act on System of choice into an enabler of hegemonic male structures preventing female empowerment and diversity amongst providers from happening. The female entrepreneurs providing services on the homecare market today are not there because of the measures are taken to ensure empowerment and diversity but rather despite it. The study concludes that LOV does not empower female entrepreneurs as intended and the entrepreneurship that was meant to provide empowerment for women instead have concentrated masculinity ultimately steering both the female entrepreneurs’ freedom and work satisfaction.