Helene Castenbrandt

The project examines how women's unpaid care work was gradually excluded during the transition from private to public health insurance in Sweden, 1900-1986. It takes its starting point in the observed high female membership in Swedish private health insurances, where women had the right to sick pay for unpaid care work before the introduction of public health insurance in 1955. Using unique individual?level data, aggregated statistics, and archival and printed material, the project analyses how compensation levels changed, how sick pay for unpaid work was justified and debated, and how these shifts contributed to women’s long?term health disadvantages and persistent gendered inequalities.