The response from organizations representing nurses, nursing assistants, teachers and early childhood educators has been to applaud for the initiative to organize more systematic education and training for women entering these occupations. Indeed, women themselves had pressed for this long before the union leadership launched their initiative. But they also see the need to critically assess the form and content of education for women, the possible effects the training may have, its organizational and workplace implications for groups who would be included or excluded from it.

These are difficult issues. Partly they are about defining the skills, knowledge's and competencies required to perform and organize certain kinds of work. Part of the solution may be a different approach to the notion of "skill." That is, we need to rescue skill from the idea that it consists of a capacity or possession of individuals, or that the degree of skill can be observed and measured directly in someone's performance of a job. Rather, skill must be seen as a feature of the social relations of education and work, and as part of ideological constructions which serve to divide people in the workplace. One of the key divisions which notions of skill serve to reinforce is the division between jobs done by women and men. As Phillips and Taylor, Jenson and others have argued, once you begin to look at what people actually do and what they need to know in order to do it well, you begin to see that the label "skilled work" is often attached to a job because of the male gender of the person usually performing it (8).

At the same time, however, we must acknowledge what workers learn by virtue of their experience or their training for a job. Thus, it is politically important to expand the notion of what counts as skilled work by claiming and defending women's knowledge and skills, while at the same time questioning the ways in which ideological notions of skill have been used to exclude women from many occupations.

The Norwegian health sector proposal is important here in its explicit objective to promote "feminine" occupations as skilled. That is, the work that women do in caring occupations is not something that we naturally know how to do; it is work which requires extensive knowledge and a wide range of learning and competencies. And, finally, it is work that warrants wages that are comparable to "male" skilled occupations, or to professional "female" jobs.

Karl Dehli teaches in the Department of Sociology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

1. See Hariet Holter (ed.) Patriarchy in a Welfare State. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1984, and Anne Maie Berg, Randi Lavik and Inger Lise Solvang, Tid til Likestilling? Likestillingstpolitikk og Tidsorganisering. (Sex Discrimination and Public Policy, Norway 19701990, English Summary), Oslo: SIFO Report No.5, 1990.
2. This section of the paper is based on interviews with public and private sector union leaders, employer representatives, government administrators and policymakers involved in education, apprenticeship and training issues. In addition, I collected policy reports, official legislation and regulations, curriculum guidelines, union and management journals and reports, and newspaper, magazine and journal articles.
3. Runa Haukaa and Birgit BrockUtne, Kunnskap Uten Makt. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1980.
4. "Omsorgsfag," Rode Fane, No.1, 1989, pp. 8- 12. (Interview with leaders of organizations in the health/welfare sectors about the generalist training proposal.)
5. Liv Mjelde, "Between Schooling and Work, Women and Vocational Training in Scandinavia," Resources for Feminist Research, 1984.
6. "Omsorgsfag," Rode Fane.
7. Margot Dvalvik Seter, speaking as representative of the Norwegian Union of Municipal Employees to Public Hearings on Wages and Gender (Lonn og Kjonn). Horingsrapport, Oslo, 1987, p.61.
8. Jane Jenson, "The Talents of Women, The Skills of Men: Flexible Specialization and Women," in S. Wood, The Degradation of Work (2nd ed.). London: Hutchinson 19'88; Anne Phillips and Barbara Taylor, "Sex and Skill," in Waged Work. A Reader. (Collection of papers from Feminist Review) London: Verso, 1986.