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.