Social äggfrysning till förmån för karriär - En kvalitativ studie kring social hållbarhet

Abstract

Women’s strive to reach higher leading positions and build a career that's combinable with child birth and private life, is an on-going debate among academics in the fields of leadership, management and organization. This bachelor level thesis is written at the section of Management & Organization at School of Business, Economics and Law in Gothenburg, Sweden, spring semester 2015. In our research methodwe have used source triangulation with a qualitative approach to the subject of egg-freezing in favour for career with a focus on Swedish workplaces. The purpose has been to illuminate, map out and further problematize how the introduction of the employee benefit in November 2014 can be seen to relate to social sustainability. A lot of the management research that discusses social sustainability tends to focus on how women (and men!) try to balance family life and career and how to combine (or to not combine) them. By illuminating what social egg-freezing can imply as an employee benefit, we raise a discussion about individiualism, a sustainable life style and the employer’s role and responsibilities. Social egg-freezing is, at the time of writing, relatively new and is perceived as acontroversial, complex and sensitive subject. The emerged thoughts in our focus groups, our interview with the Swedish wage administration company Benify and in media, are multifaceted. The problem area is interdisciplinary and therefore relevant within multiple academic areas where ethical, philosophical and medical considerations regarding artificial pregnancy are interconnected with the new phenomenon which has now, as well become a management issue. Required delimitations have been made to focus at management and organization. Our wish is to fill a gap of knowledge about social sustainability and to illuminate how the institutionalization of the employee benefit can legitimize it, for better and for worse.