Letting Women in? Gender Mainstreaming in Regional Policies

Abstract

Gender mainstreaming has over the last ten years become the dominant strategy of integrating gender issues in public policy. This article presents regional policy as a broad and increasingly important policy field to study, and analyses gender mainstreaming in this policy field in the Norwegian and the Swedish contexts. How do problem representations surrounding “gender equality” and “gender mainstreaming” produce meanings of gender as well as construct possibilities for change? The article shows that, despite some differences between the two countries, gender mainstreaming in regional policy can to a large extent be read as meaning “women”. Women are in this context given a narrow subject position and are constructed as lacking what it takes to produce sustainable regional growth. The concluding discussion highlights the relations between the implementation of gender mainstreaming and neo‐liberal political trends.

Notes

1. I would like to thank Chris Hudson for useful comments on this text.

2. For a more elaborated analysis of the Swedish case, see Hudson & Rönnblom forthcoming.

3. My definition of politicization is informed by the work of the Swedish political scientist Maria Wendt Höjer. She regards three aspects as needed if a question or a phenomenon is to be regarded as political; it should be articulated on the public agenda, formulated in collective terms and formulated in terms of conflict (Wendt Höjer 2002).