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Historisk tidskrift 130:2 • 2010

Innehåll (Contents) 2010:2

Uppsatser (Articles)

Då bankmannen blev kvinna. Det svenska bankväsendets feminisering 1910–1939

Av Kajsa Holmberg

 

Fulltext (pdf)

Summary

When the bank man became a woman: the feminisation of the Swedish bank sector 1910–1939

This article investigates the course and causes of the feminisation of the Swedish bank sector between the years 1910 and 1939 from an employee perspective. With union periodicals as the main source material, economic, institutional and cultural explanations to feminisation are tested and proved to be tightly interwoven in a way best captured by a queue-theoretical approach.

The analysis identifies the radical structural change in the bank sector during the 1910s as the catalyst of feminisation. A massive growth in size of both the sector itself and its units greatly increased the demand for labour, but also led to a qualitative change in the character of bank work which brought it closer to traditional “women’s work“ and reduced men’s interest in the occupation. From the employers’ point of view, at the same time that it became necessary to hire women, women also became a more natural choice of bank labour.

The findings from the Swedish bank sector contrast with the conventional wisdom that a workplace loses status as a result of an increased female presence. Instead, loss of status is found to have preceded and enabled feminisation. This article therefore underscores the importance and further need of qualitative empirical inquiry for understanding changes in the labour composition of occupations.

Keywords

Sweden, 20th century, feminisation, gender, bank sector, labour unions, labour market, sex-typing, queue theory.