I tider när det inte är strider

Abstract

This master's thesis analyses the concept of equality between men and women in parts of Region Västra Götaland's area of operation. With critical policy analysis I analyse how the problem of inequality is represented in the European charter for equality of women and men in local life (CEMR) and the Region Västra Götaland's plan of action for the charter. Through interviews with people responsible for gender equality in different areas I analyse, with discourse theory, the ways in which the concept of gender equality is articulated in different areas of Region Västra Götaland, and what kind of politics these articulations enables. In the analysis I show that a discursive struggle of how equality is to be defined can better be understood as a discursive negotiation. Equality between men and women is understood in several ways at the same time, as antidiscrimination and basic human rights, as balance between the sexes, and as an approach critical of norms and stereotypes. Within these negotiations certain understandings of gender are made possible or impossible. Men and women are seen as equals, at the same time as women are seen as a separate category that can offer specific experience and characteristics. Specific characteristics that are necessary to seize in the striving towards maximum social and economic growth.