Petersen, Helen | Sweden

Helen Peterson received her doctor’s degree in Sociology in 2005 at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her main fields of work concern the links between the construction of gender and the assessment of technical competence in work organizations. She has studied how gendered work ideals influence career possibilities for women and men in various technical work settings: in the Swedish engineering industry, in the IT business and in engineering research in the academic sector.

2006-2007 she worked in the research project PROMETEA: Empowering Women Engineers’ Careers in Industrial and Academic Research, funded by the European Commission in the 6th Framework Programme. During her stay at the IAS-STS she will be engaged in further analysing the empirical material from the PROMETEA project.

Since July 2008 she is a Research Fellow in sociology at the Research School Conditions of Democracy at Örebro University, Sweden. In addition to her work on gender, career and technology she has participated in a research project investigating work-family balance, work-life flexibility and gender. She is also currently the project leader of a project on childlessness and motherhood: ‘Rejecting Motherhood. Voluntarily Childless Women, Normative Motherhood and Feminine Identity in an Individualized Society’ financed by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research. Her visit to the IAS-STS is funded by a scholarship from the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education.

Project at IAS-STS: Work Ideals in Engineering Research: Gender, Technology and Career Development

During her stay at the IAS-STS Dr. Peterson plans to continue to analyse the extensive empirical material from the PROMETEA project. Altogether, over 270 women and men participated in interviews or focus groups in thirteen countries. I addition, also quantitative data, mapping the engineering field, was gathered in all countries. The overall aim of the PROMETEA project is to develop a better understanding of gender issues in engineering and technology research settings, in order to propose effective measures and recommendations to empower women engineers’ careers in academic and industrial research in Europe. The project combines a focus on engineering, careers of female engineers and research activities with organizational processes in which these activities occur. The more specific goals of the research project are to explore the gender dynamics of male and female careers in different engineering organisations, to explore the effect of organisational cultures on male and female careers in different engineering organisations and to explore the assessment and measures of excellence in engineering and technology research and the impact on male and female careers.

Peterson’s work at the IAS-STS will focus on different subjects in relation to engineering culture, technology, technical competence and women’s careers: women’s strategies for career advancement, barriers and facilitators in the advancement of women engineers in the workplace, work ideals, good practice and women’s and men’s resistance towards gender equality policies. In what way do the construction of technology, femininity and masculinity intersect to constitute a work ideal and work culture in engineering research? What characterizes the work ideal and the work culture and what implications does the work ideal and work culture have on women engineers’ career in different research settings?
 

Selected Publications

Peterson, Helen (2008a) “Women’s Career Strategies in Engineering: Confronting Masculine Workplace Culture”. In Godfroy-Genin, Anne-Sophie (ed.), Women in Engineering and Technology Research, Proceedings of the PROMETEA Conference, Paris October 26-27 2007. Lit Verlag, Zürich.

Peterson, Helen (2008b) “Man måste sälja sig själv. Yrkesmässiga krav i det nya arbetslivet - ett könsperspektiv”. [”Sell Yourself! Work Demands in the New Working Life – a Gendered Perspective”]. Arbetsliv i omvandling [Work Life in Transition] 2008:2.

Peterson, Helen (2007a) “Gendered Work Ideals in Swedish IT Firms. Valued and not Valued Workers”. Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 333-348. Special Issue on Gender and New Technologies.

Peterson, Helen (2007b) ”Flexibilitet och förtroende i avreglerade organisationer – ett arbetstagarperspektiv”. [”Flexibility and Trust in Deregulated Organizations – an Employee Perspective”] Arbetsmarknad & Arbetsliv [Labour Market & Work Life]. Vol 13, no 2, pp 29-40.

Peterson, Helen (2005) Gender, Power and Post-Bureaucracy. Work Ideals in IT Consulting. Dissertation. Uppsala: Department of Sociology, Uppsala University.