The project aims to build an understanding of how pressures to perform affect the careers of academic knowledge workers with different family situations, especially those who wish to have children and those who cannot (or choose not to) have children.

The project will focus on academic knowledge workers, but the findings will reflect experiences of care responsibilities in other knowledge-intensive and competitive fields where there are pressures to perform. The findings will contribute to understanding the challenges and opportunities of combining parenting with knowledge work and will help to create fair policies and practices at both the organizational and societal levels.

The project, Share the Care, will provide new knowledge towards a less gender-segregated health care sector, a heavily female-dominated sector. The actions implemented are largely based on recommendation from previous research “Men in Nursing Education: Mapping Educational Practices, and Student Experiences in Iceland, Denmark, and Norway”.

This will be done by implementing a system to follow cohorts in nursing education and document reasons behind drop-outs and delays during study which will produce important knowledge to counteract the problem. Actions are planned to address educational material and communication, as well as creation of special platforms for male student to minimize the risk of exclusion and alienation. Groups of study and career counsellors will be formed to create knowledge and stimulate more men to engage in care work. These actions will be an important input for educational institutions and authorities on how to recruit and retain men in nursing education.