Teknik är svårt, omsorg är lätt : Kommunchefers föreställningar om ledarskap och genus i äldreomsorgen respektive i teknisk förvaltning

Sammanfattning: The elderly care is an area of great importance to women. Women are more often in need of elderly care; they work with the service and provide a majority of the informal service. Research shows that managers’ work-related prerequisites are significantly different between the male dominated technical administration and the female dominated care and educational administration. Studies also show that what the highest managerial organisation gives priority to, often permeate the whole organisation. The head of town is the highest deciding official civil servant with an overview of the different municipal administrations. This study focuses on the middle managers in elderly care seen through the head of town s’ conception of leadership in geriatric care. The comprehensive aim of this thesis is to study the head of town s’ conceptions of leadership in municipal elderly care through a gender perspective. To elucidate the gender perspective, the head of towns’ conceptions about leadership in elderly care is contrasted to leadership in the male dominated technical administrations. Theories that this thesis theoretical ground is built on is organisations and leadership theories integrated with theories about genus and equality. A qualitative approach through interviews has been chosen as the method for this study. The respondents constitutes of seven persons that are the head of town and one of whom are a woman. The result shows that middle managers in elderly care and middle managers in technical admini-strations share the same level of responsibility, but their leadership differs from one another in one respect: the municipal mangers in elderly care are responsible for far more personnel. Only 13 percent of the head of towns are women. Therefore the head of towns are a relatively homogenised group; hence it is a possibility that the decision making will be one-dimensional. This study shows that the head of tows are not very well-informed on the organisation in elderly care. All of the head of towns describe the situation of the manager in elderly care as very strained. Generally, the female dominated elderly care is given significantly worse prerequisites and conditions in the working environment than male dominated technical administration, despite the fact that the municipality is the employer of both administrations and despite the fact that the municipal should work actively with equalization. Sweden is one of the most equalised countries in the world but even though municipalities are legally bound by a political directive to work actively with equality, the question of structural inequality is disregarded when an entire activity is given significantly poorer conditions. When managers in elderly care are given poor possibilities to exercise their leadership, both per-sonnel and the elderly in need of care are affected. Municipal middle managers and their personnel have poor working conditions and the staff in elderly care can not get enough guidance and time for reflection continuously in there works. This structural discrimination affects women in several ways: a majority of the elderly who are in need of the service and a majority of the personnel are women.