The women of industrial towns : A study of female participation in study circles in Deje 1950-1970

This Bachelor thesis is about women and their participation in study circles in the industrial town of Deje between 1950-1970. The purpose of this Bachelor thesis is to examine the participation of women in study circles in an industrial town. The research questions for my thesis are the following: 1. How did the participation of study circles look like in the industrial town of Deje between the years 1950-1970? 2. In which study circles did women participate in during the research period and how can it be understood in relation to the surrounding industrial town? My research includes qualitative studies of literature, protocols, attendance lists and documents concerning ABF’s work that´s archived in Archives centre in Karlstad. My research has also consisted of quantitative studies as interpretive methods have been used in the survey. I have been looking into ABF’s documentation concerning the activity in Deje to see which study circles the people in Deje participated in and compared them to how the choose what they studied. The theory that I have chosen for this thesis is Yvonne Hirdman´s theory about “Gender contract”. The subject I researched in changed a lot during these 20 years that was researched. During the 1950s, the women was a minority when it came to study circles. Most people who studied consisted in majority of men and there was just a few women in some of the circles. The study circles changed during the 1960s when women started to study more than earlier. It created more circles that there were only women in and men had since before a lot circles where it rarely appeared women in. This did not create more equal circles during these years, instead it created more study circles that were sex-segregated. It was also during the 1960s more study circles that was related to work and especially to the paper and mass factory that was in Deje during this time. The study circles which were related to the work place had no female participants, but a few years after got more women into the study circles and whom could be connected with their standard of living in Deje during this time. The results of the research have also shown that Deje alone to have it this way. Both Lesjöfors and Munkfors were towns that had similar standards and that show us that industrial towns work in similar ways during this period