Gender mainstreaming - from a bureaucratic process to the 'doing' of real changes

Sweden is often highlighted as one of the world’s most equal countries, while research shows significant differences between men’s and women’s living conditions.

Since the mid-1990s, gender mainstreaming has been the prevailing strategy within Swedish authorities and Swedish administration to increase gender equality in society.

Put simply, this means that an equality perspective must be integrated into all decisions and at all levels in order to increase equality.

Critics of this strategy have postulated that gender equality work has been bureaucratized and that far-reaching changes have not occurred.

The municipality of Lund is at the beginning of its work with gender mainstreaming according to the “Model Concept”, and has similar experiences.

In order for the work not to stop at the policy level, the municipality of Lund requests knowledge about what is required for gender mainstreaming to become an effective means of achieving the gender equality goals.

The project aims to understand the organization and actions required to create effective and comprehensive gender mainstreaming in the municipality of Lund, in order to tackle the previously identified challenges.

This is done by closely following the change process through interviews and shadowing of employees and managers and through document analysis.

An important project contribution is to develop effective forms and methods for gender mainstreaming based on a knowledge-based approach.