Downshifting in Sweden: Care, Freedom and Equality?

This project focuses on people in Sweden who have changed lifestyles towards reduced work-time and consumption, usually called “downshifting” and “voluntary simplicity”. These lifestyles envision a way out of the work-spend cycle (“ekorrhjulet” in Swedish) while potentially reducing one’s ecological impact.

While reduced work-time may improve the individual work-life balance, the unequal distribution of part-time work as well as the unpaid care-and household work have economic and social impacts on gender equality, both at household- and societal level. A central inquiry in this project is therefore how the practise of downshifting and voluntary simplicity might be gendered.