The Gender of the Poor Relief and the Fragile Citizenship : A Comparative Study of the Poor Relief Organization in Karlstad and Kristinehamn

During the nineteenth century there was a series of reforms in the Swedish poor relief system. These changes laid the basis for the Swedish social policies implemented in today’s modern society. It is also during this period of time this paper has its focus. There were specific gender roles and citizenship ideals in the society and the aim of this paper is to illustrate how these roles and ideals took place in the poor relief system as well. This will be done by a comparative study of the poor relief organization in Karlstad and Kristinehamn in the county of Värmland. When the poor relief board had meetings they kept strict protocol of the discussions and those protocols are the subject of this qualitatively interpretive study. In this paper the study is chronologically presented from the year 1871 to 1918. Previous research shows that there were strict roles and ideals in the society and in the poor relief system as well and the material of this study shows that it comprises these two cities also. This paper shows that gender-related discrimination in fact did exist within the poor relief. The poor relief did offer some chores to the poor people in exchange for care and these chores were gender-related as well. The conclusions of this paper are based on comparison with previous research and the theoretical basis presented in the study