| dc.description.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. | sv |
