What you need is what you get? Vocabularies of needs and gender in Swedish budget- and debt counselling

Abstract In recent years, political and academic attention has been directed towards gender and over-indebtedness. That gender plays a role in people’s acquisition and management of overwhelming debt is well-established, but few empirical examinations are devoted to how social workers encountering over-indebted women and men consider gender in their everyday practice. This qualitative vignette study analyses how thirty-nine Swedish budget and debt counsellors interpret the needs of over-indebted women and men, and how gender is produced in and through their need interpretations. The analysis identifies five vocabularies that counsellors utilize to interpret over-indebted women’s and men’s needs: vocabularies of activity, strength, incapability, vulnerability and severity. Several of these vocabularies, in turn, build on accounts linking masculinity to capability and independence, and femininity to vulnerability. While the counsellors draw on experiences and beliefs related to gender to perform need interpretations, they simultaneously articulate gender-neutrality as a professional ideal. The findings are discussed in relation to their implications for over-indebted women’s and men’s ability to regain financial stability, and suggestions are made on how to develop gender awareness in the practice of budget- and debt counselling.