This article investigates the gendered dynamics of motherhood and careers, as voiced by professionals in the knowledge-intensive business sector in Finland. It is informed by the CIAR method through 81 iterative, in-depth interviews with 23 women and 19 men. Among the women respondents with no children, one child, or two children, three dominant forms of discursive talk emerge: ‘It takes two to tango’, ‘It’s all about time management’ and ‘Good motherhood 2.0’. Though Finland provides a seemingly egalitarian Nordic welfare state context, with the ‘Finnish Dream’, women face contradictions between expectations of women as full-time ideal workers pursuing masculinist careers and continuing responsibilities at home, performing ‘good motherhood’. The women’s double strivings meet the double constraining demands of these ideals. The gendered pressures are imposed on the women by themselves, male colleagues, the organisation more broadly and society, leading the women to enact a form of ‘bounded individualism’.

本文调查了芬兰知识密集型商业领域的专业人员所表达的母亲和职业的性别动态。通过CIAR方法，通过对23位女性和19位男性进行的81次迭代，深度访谈，了解了这一点。在没有孩子，一个孩子或两个孩子的女性受访者中，出现了三种占主导地位的话语交谈形式：“探戈需要两个人”，“时间管理都与之相关”和“好母亲2.0”。尽管芬兰提供了看似平等的北欧福利国家背景，但有了“芬兰梦”，妇女仍面临着妇女的期望，她们期望她们成为从事男性职业的全职理想工作者，并继续承担家庭责任，表现出“良好的母性”。妇女的双重努力满足了这些理想的双重约束要求。