Integrera jämställdhetsintegrering - En studie om vision, styrtekniker och institutionell förändring

Abstract

Purpose In 2016 all the Swedish schools of higher education were assigned an objective to develop a plan for their respective working in the regard of how they would work towards gender equality using gender mainstreaming, and how to achieve Sweden’s gender political goals. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how this objective was produced, problematized and intended to solve what kind of problem representation. This is done by looking the objective as a political discourse, which constitutes the intentions and goals. Theory Using a discursive approach, policy is seen as constituting of the problem and its solutions through so called problem representations. Governmentality is used as an analytical tool for studying governance techniques where New public management and neo-liberal governance becomes key forms of governance. Method Discursive analysis of transcriptions from interviews with government officials from the Swedish government office, as well as analysis of political articles of discussions, press-releases and speeches. Results The issues that the assignment is issued to solve are that Swedish academy and research institutions not adequately enough fulfil the political vision of gender equality. Overall the gender objective revolves around (1) the operations does not have the proper capacity for gender works, which has to be built and implemented; (2) building a framework and a knowledge based foundation with the potential of resulting in a further politicization of the gender political works, and; (3) having the academy becoming more self-reflective in how their actions affect the gender equality, and the works. Governance is allowing and sanctioning the universities themselves to find, highlight and resolve issues in their own operations, presenting their results for the government office, which in the long run could pose as a widening and re-politicization of gender mainstreaming. A way to concretize the goals in the future, based on the findings and knowledge from the academy. The political rhetoric legitimize the assignment as a condition of a strong and equal society, but also as a competitive education and research nation, where women and men have equal opportunity to utilize their competence. Highlighted is the power performed by the government officials, which certainly indicates the role of the NPM as modern type of governance, together with the governance at a distance, which is key for neo-liberal governance.