Jämställdhet – för männens, arbetarklassens och effektivitetens skull? En diskursiv policystudie av jämställdhetsarbete i maskulina miljöer

Sammanfattning: Issues concerning gender equality are today an integral part of Swedish society. Because of this, even traditionally male-dominated actors are forced to incorporate a focus on gender equality. What kind of tensions may this provoke, and how are these tensions visible in the gender equality policy making of traditionally male-dominated organizations? Against this background, the aim of this dissertation is to analyse how issues of gender equality are “problematized” by three organizations that originate from masculine environments; Män för jämställdhet, IF Metall  and Rikpolisstyrelsen. I wish to analyse the meaning that these actors incorporate into the issue of gender equality and from which discourses these meanings are derived. This focus entails a specific theoretical standpoint. Thus, another aim of the study is to discuss the advantages of a post-structuralist approach to the study of public policy. More specifically, I want to develop the use of a range of discourse analytical modes of analysis and to evaluate their utility in capturing the dynamic of problematization processes.The empirical focus of the dissertation is on the years between 2000 and 2008. The research material consists of both formal and informal documents.The analysis shows that questions of gender equality can be problematized in a number of ways. Issues concerning gender equality can be tied to issues of men’s hegemony, men’s gender-specific problems, class-based problems and organizational problems. This wide array of problematizations also illustrates ways in which there still seems to be an underlying conflict over the meanings tied to the concept, even though nobody openly challenges the importance of gender equality reform efforts. I call this situation a “conflictual consensus” and point to the importance of deconstructing this supposed unity and illuminating the kind of power relations that lay hidden beneath it.