Changing Work, Changing Households: New Challenges to Masculinity and Femininity in Norwegian Vocational Education

In the Nordic countries today, almost everybody is in favor of gender equality. It is seen as part of “the natural order” to use an expression from Gramsci (1957). Yet many different interpretations and expectations lie hidden behind the concept of gender equality. “The women’s place” is a theme that has been on the agenda in bourgeois society in relation to specific family roles since the industrial revolution, and is eloquently described in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House written in 1879.