A sober farmhand will earn well : a gender analysis of job advertisements in Nya Wemlands-Tidningen 1885-1905

Kvinnoforskare är eniga att det under historiens gång existerat en kvinnlig underordning. I hemlivet hade de två könen olika uppgifter; kvinnans plats var i hemmet, där hon tog hand om hushållet och familjen, medan mannen skulle arbeta utomhus. Feminismens frammarsch innebar att fler kvinnor började arbeta, trots att idealet fortfarande var att kvinnan utövade sina moderliga egenskaper, vilket hon skulle göra även på arbetsplatsen. Därmed blev olika yrken snabbt könskodade. Denna uppsats syftar till att undersöka platsannonser i lokaltidningen Nya Wermlands-Tidningen och hur de speglar maktrelationen mellan kvinnor och män i arbetslivet åren 1885-1905. Detta har gjorts genom en kritisk diskursanalys vilken fokuserar på adjektiv som använts för att beskriva den manliga respektive kvinnliga arbetaren samt en kvantitativ studie av antalet platsannonser som riktade sig till eller publicerades av män respektive kvinnor. Resultaten visar hur de adjektiv som beskriver den kvinnliga arbetaren fokuserar mer på hennes personlighetsdrag jämfört med de som används för att beskriva män, vilka istället fokuserar mer på yrkeskompetens. Fler kvinnor än män efterfrågades av arbetsgivare samt sökte arbete genom platsannonser, vilket speglar hur fler kvinnor var benägna att arbeta. Arbetssökande kvinnor kom att under de senare åren mer frekvent använda sig av adjektiv som oftare använts för att beskriva män, såväl som att söka sig till mansdominerade yrken, och utmanade således de manliga privilegierna.Throughout history women have been seen to have a subordinate role in comparison to men. In the domestic life, the two genders were assigned different tasks. Women were meant to stay indoors, taking care of the household and their family, while men were meant to work outside. As the feminist movement became more widespread throughout Sweden, more women started working, though the standard of women staying indoors, practicing her motherly instincts, remained at her place of work. Thus, different professions were labeled with being either feminine or masculine. The purpose of this essay is to investigate job advertisements in the Swedish local newspaper Nya Wermlands-Tidningen and how they reflect contemporary power structures between men and women in working life in Sweden during the years 1885-1905. This has been carried out through a critical discourse analysis which focuses upon adjectives describing the workers as well as a quantitative study of how many advertisements were addressed to or published by women and men respectively. Results show how working women were described with adjectives that focused more upon their personality than those which were used to describe men, which instead focused more upon their experience in the work field. More women than men were requested by employers as well as sought employment through advertisements, which reflects how more women were prone to work. Job-seeking women were more likely, in the later years, to use adjectives that were previously more common to use when describing men, as well as to seek professions that were dominated by men, challenging the traditional manliness and male privileges