The chapter emerged from a narrative and a dialogue between a feminist academic and a feminist bureaucrat and recounts the experience of a gender expert in the Swedish Foreign Ministry against reflections from feminist institutional theory. It highlights the institutional challenges that government officials face when promoting gender equality in sustainability and climate issues and how they navigate that space in order to gender mainstream the agenda – e.g. through several types of critical acts. It highlights several institutional obstacles that challenge gender-mainstreaming efforts but also illustrates how action is possible, even when it pushes the comfort zone of gender politics, e.g. when a new gender perspective was launched, that of seeing men and particularly elite male behaviour to be ‘the problem’ to tackle in sustainable development. Finally, it concludes that for gender and intersectionality to gain prominence on the governmental agenda of climate change and sustainability, the work of single-gender experts does not suffice, politics is vital. Politics is imperative in guiding the governmental ministries but requires political mobilisation of broader sections of society as well.

Syfte: Att undersöka om det råder skillnader i hur tandläkarstudenter av olika kön, på Malmö universitet värderar sina egna prestationer vid den kliniska examinationen på termin 9. Material och metod: I studien ingick 114 studenter (72 kvinnor, 42 män) vars avidentifierade självbedömningsformulär för genomförd klinisk examination 2018 respektive 2019 analyserades. Åtta av formulärets 12 delområden analyserades; anamnesupptagning, klinisk undersökning, omhändertagande, hygien, diagnostik, behandlingsplan, förmåga till självbedömning, examinationen i sin helhet. För att jämföra grupperna kvinnor och män användes t test. Signifikansnivån sattes till p ≤ 0,05. Resultat: Skillnad mellan könen registrerades för delområdet ”klinisk undersökning” 2018 där män värderade sina prestationer högre än kvinnor (p=0,044) och för delområdet ”examinationen i sin helhet” från 2019 där kvinnor värderade sina prestationer högre än män (p=0,037). I övrigt registrerades inga skillnader för den kliniska examinationen. Slutsats: Resultaten från denna studie bedöms inte vara tillräckliga för att kunna dra slutsatsen att kön har någon inverkan på hur studenterna värderar sina egna prestationer vid den kliniska examinationen. För mer representativa resultat krävs mer framtida studier om detta ämnesområde.

The aim of this study is to describe and explain how five women with a non-European background find the expression of everyday racism in today’s Swedish society, how everyday racism can affect their mental health and how they experience that the Swedish majority population handle and respond to everyday racism. The study is qualitative and was made with semi-structured interviews. The theories used are the theory of everyday racism, "we" and "the Others" and Goffman’s stigma. The results indicate that everyday racism is manifested through the population's ignorance and silence, comments, prejudices and stereotypes and is mainly expressed in arenas where there are many people at the same time. According to the women, the school and the labor market are the two most common arenas for the expression of everyday racism. They witness that the Swedish majority population rarely deal with the occurrence of everyday racism. Their mental health is negatively affected by everyday racism and can lower the individual's self-esteem. The study’s three theories that include everyday racism, “we” and “the Others” and stigma can be applied to the women's stories about their experiences and feelings about everyday racism in the Swedish society.

Barn idag tillbringar en stor del av deras barndom på förskolan och mycket av dagarna där spenderas i utemiljöerna. Att förskolan ska erbjuda och sträva efter att barnen ska mötas och behandlas på jämlikt vis är en viktig fråga inom förskolan men det krävs kunskap och förståelse för hur jämlikt tolkas och användas. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om de lekredskap och ytor som förskolans utemiljö erbjuder påverkar barns lek ur ett genusperspektiv. 

Studien baseras på en kvalitativ metod genom intervjuer av två förskollärare samt deltagande observation av sex barn som visat och berättat om vad och hur de leker i förskolans utemiljö. För att tolka och analysera min insamlade empiri så utgick jag ifrån barndomssociologiska teoretiska begrepp som kamratkultur, tolkande reproduktion och det miljöpsykologiska begreppet affordance. 

Resultatet av min studie visar på att utemiljön på förskolan inte är så genusneutral som den oftast antas vara. I intervjuerna som gjorts framkom det att grupper av barn tar sig an utemiljön och dess innehåll olika beroende på könstillhörighet. Studien vill bidra till kunskap om hur utformningen av förskolans utemiljö kan påverka barnens lekar ur ett genusperspektiv. 

The article shows how the Danish news media’s portrayals of meetings between visible minority males and ethnically Danish females have participated in constructing certain images of gender, sexuality and race/ethnicity. It illustrates how understandings of these categories are interwoven with understandings of nationality and Danishness, and argues that in order to understand constructions of nationalities, scholars need to take gender, race/ethnicity and sexuality into consideration. The article shows how ethnically Danish females have been constructed as symbolic reproducers of the nation, and how sexual assaults against ethnically Danish women therefore have been interpreted as assaults against the nation. The article explains how this understanding has been at play in rape narratives where gender – and women’s responsibility for rape – has been articulated in rape cases with white ethnically Danish perpetrators whereas race/ethnicity has been articulated as an explanation for rape in cases with visible minority perpetrators.

This paper is based on collaborative autoethnography about being disabled in contemporary working life. It draws from the two authors’ (Elisabet Apelmo and Camilla Nordgren) experiences as instructors and researchers at a Swedish university and focuses on examples of inaccessibility in everyday situations. Disabled people are underrepresented in academia and disabled academics are hindered from fully participating. We find ableist structures and practices within working life and the current neoliberal organisation, together with the individualisation of work environment problems and diffuse responsibility, as the main obstacles to accessibility. The paper opens up a critique of hindrances to accessibility within the academic walls. It is proposed that the focus be shifted from the problematised outsider to how ableism, built on the idea of the normal worker, excludes. While waiting for the person responsible for accessibility to raise his or her hand, one way of achieving change is to become crip killjoys, and thus pay attention to injustice. 

This chapter is based on collaborative autoethnography about being disabled in contemporary working life. It draws from the two authors’ experiences as instructors and researchers at a Swedish university and focuses on examples of inaccessibility in everyday situations. Disabled people are underrepresented in academia and disabled academics are hindered from fully participating. We find ableist structures and practices within working life and the current neoliberal organisation, together with the individualisation of work environment problems and diffuse responsibility, as the main obstacles to accessibility. The chapter opens up a critique of hindrances to accessibility within the academic walls. It is proposed that the focus be shifted from the problematised outsider to how ableism, built on the idea of the normal worker, excludes. While waiting for the person responsible for accessibility to raise his or her hand, one way of achieving change is to become crip killjoys, and thus pay attention to injustice. 

This thesis explores what kind of ‘problems’ Germany’s official Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) guidelines represent and aims to address this field via a poststructural policy analysis inspired by Foucauldian discourse analysis. The analysis follows six analytical questions starting with “What is the ‘problem’ represented to be?”, also known as the WPR approach by Bacchi and Goodwin. By applying such WPR approach, the analysis investigates ‘problem’ representations, embedded discourses and their power relations as well as silences, effects and alternatives within FFP. The main findings reveal how FFP problematizes equal participation, representation of and opportunities for women and marginalized people as a matter of rights and as instruments bringing peace, security and stability while also requiring special protection. Such representations predominantly entail liberal and global feminist perspectives with neoliberal tendencies. Despite standing in contrast to one another, they borrow from intersectional and postcolonial discourses and feminisms. Moreover, the liberal rights-discourse constructs women as a homogenous group while intersectionality acknowledges differences. Instead of radically questioning persisting power structures, dominant neoliberal discourses effectively construct women as important change-makers and equality as a factor everyone supposedly would benefit from the various discourses trigger an othering-effect making women and marginalized people still the other.

This bachelor’s thesis is an effort to understand how black women in Sweden experience 'race' and racism in everyday life. The theoretical framework includes a postcolonial theory from Sara Ahmed, with the concept of 'race' as a key element. Additional to that, Judith Butler’s gender performativity theory contributes to a broader understanding of the informants’ situation. The material consisting of interviews with four young black women implies that everyday racism is present in Swedish society to that extent that 'race' is a major aspect of these women’s life. In everyday encounters with the white majority of the society, they often feel different, marginalized, objectified and exotified. Furthermore, the informants experience that their skin color and phenotypic markers are a magnet for white people’s fetish and fantasies, but also an obstacle to obtain legitimacy in interactions with them. To those reasons, the informants are considering migrating to a country where black people are forming a larger minority in society than it is the case in Sweden. That opens up the possibility to interact with more black people who have similar experiences of being exposed to everyday racism.

The political potential of unconventional and even transgressive forms of writing in management and organization studies has been invigorated in recent years through an explicit connection with feminist theories, ideas, and practices. The results have been a new wave of scholarship that brings together the personal, the political, and the theoretical as a means to intervene in masculine orthodoxy of organizational writing. This intervention seeks to change what and how we understand organizational phenomena, with an ultimate goal of transforming practice toward a more equal and egalitarian future. We introduce five papers that responded to a call to explore the intersections between change and academic writing, as well as an exploration of alternatives to dominant masculine academic writing styles. Such writing, we aver, might facilitate change not just in the academy, but also in organizations and by extension, society.

The field of international development cooperation has experienced an increasing demand for result-driven management over the last decades. However, a clear consensus of the meaning of ‘ results’ is often lacking in initiatives and projects for social change. As the field functions throughout myriads of contexts and cultures, the demand of results therefore brings upon issues of definitions and discourse, as well as underlying values. The goals and strategies set out to achieve certain results are influenced by assumptions that define the problem definition of the targeted issue. A hierarchy in international development, the so-called aid chain, is determined by who provides funding for cooperation projects. The flow of top-down funding is shown to be accompanied by a flow of top-down policies, that are further accompanied by underlying values, problem definitions, and assumptions. This study inquires whether different notions, assumptions, and problem definitions on gender equality across cultures in the aid chain might disturb result-reporting in international projects. Departing from a postcolonial perspective, the content and discourse of the Swedish feminist foreign policy and steering documents from an Indigenous women’s organization in Guatemala are analysed and compared. Seeing policies and policy-making as a significant communicative tool and practice in the field, this study shows how results, goals, strategies, problem definition and assumptions correlate to each other in result-reporting in international development cooperation projects.

Historically and presently most people employed in military forces worldwide are men. With a focus on peacekeeping and equality, the Swedish Armed Forces (SwAF) aim to recruit more women. But even as gender issues become a central focus of the SwAF, policy is mostly aimed towards women despite most employees being men. This study came about by leaning on feminist scholars’ arguments that men and masculinities need to be examined and involved when working towards positive peace, so that they do not remain naturalized and become unidentified obstacles. To achieve this aim, this thesis draws on semi-structured interviews with Swedish Peacekeepers and present a complex, contradictory puzzle of how masculinities are performed, perceived, and reproduced. Masculinities are admired but ridiculed, used as a tool for battle but an obstacle for rehabilitation, a source for deep emotional bonds and rigorously performed to turn off emotionally, and is mainly existing in the eyes of the beholder but seldom seen in oneself. The results support theoretical complexity of militarized masculinities and confirm that militarism is not inherent or come natural to men but is a performative, social construction.

This article argues that child protection rhetoric rarely applies to all children and that it, in fact, often contains decisions over whose lives are worthy of protection, and whose are not. In Russia, “traditional (family) values” have effectively become state policy, the 2013 federal law “for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values” being the most prominent example of this. The fixation of such “traditional values” discourses on protecting children from “early sexualization” by barring them from access to LGBTQ-inclusive education and care demonstrates that the child on whose behalf this protection is demanded is deemed to be straight, while further examples of child protection discourses also show that innocence is often viewed as the exlusive property of white, middle-class children. Responding to the recent escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine, this text discusses how the trauma, displacement and death of children in Ukraine reveals the biopolitical core of traditional values discourses. 

This study examines the social, political, and fantasmatic logics involved in the production of contemporary discourses about Scandinavia as a symbolic site and imagined place of sexual and moral decay and as a gender dysphoric dystopia by actors in the global anti-gender movement. Empirically, we draw on a rich digital archive of multi-modal media texts from an ongoing research project on anti-gender movements in Russia and Germany – two countries which provide particularly poignant examples of sites in which this mode of anti-gender propaganda is currently on the rise. In the analysis, we explore the discursive workings of a particularly prominent node in the material – that of the vulnerable child – and show how this figure is construed and instrumentalised to add urgency and fuel outrage among domestic audiences in Russia and Germany.

Based on a five-year qualitative ethnographic study of Bondage and Discipline/Dominance and Submission/Sadism and Masochism (BDSM) in Sweden, this paper examines the process of becoming among BDSM practitioners. In-depth interviews were completed with 29 self-defined BDSM practitioners, and their accounts were analysed using thematic analysis. Focusing on the Deleuzian concept of becoming, BDSM is understood as a dynamic and collective phenomenon closely connected to fantasies, memories and longing, and enabled through flows of desire. Practising BDSM can be understood as a process of increasing expansion, creation and connection, in which desire is seen not as something we lack or need but rather as a process of striving and self-enhancement. Exploring the becoming process more fully can provide a better understanding as to why some people choose to practise BDSM.

Young LGBTQ+ people are over-represented in various forms of state care. They experience hardships during their placements and staff competence in addressing specific needs among LGBTQ+ youth is lacking. In this article, we investigate whether and how LGTBQ+ issues are considered and described in digital marketing for state care providers. The material consists of the homepages of residential care homes and secure state care institutions, which we analyse using critical discourse analysis. The results show that LGBTQ+ issues are largely invisible. Of the approximately 1,000 existing state care providers, only twenty stated that they worked with or had competence in LGBTQ+ issues. Among these, no secure state care institution offered LGBTQ+ competence at the time of the study. The descriptions of how care providers work with LGBTQ+ issues are characterised by heteronormativity where there is a mix of two types of language on the homepages regarding LGBTQ+ youth; on the one hand, a heteronormative, traditional description based on a binary understanding of gender; and, on the other, an LGBTQ+ inclusive language is used. However, the LGBTQ+ affirmative language has been imposed upon the traditional rather than being integrated into it, which comes across as superficial and unclear. International studies show that LGBTQ+ youth are over-represented in various forms of state care. Using critical discourse analysis, we investigated how LGBTQ+ youth, as a target group, are described and how LGBTQ+ competence is presented on the home pages of residential care homes and secure state care institutions for young people in Sweden. The results show that LGBTQ is largely invisible. Of the approximately 1,000 existing residential care homes, only 20 stated that they worked with or had competence in LGBTQ+ issues. No secure state care institution offered LGBTQ+ competence at the time of the study.

Police officer has been conventionally regarded as a masculine occupation, where values such as strength, aggressivity and, bravery are commemorated. In Sweden, a country that is highly regarded for its gender equality status, understanding how police officers navigate gendered expectations is crucial to understand the implications of gender in policing. The aim of this thesis is to understand the role of masculinity in the everyday practices that define a police officer. For this purpose, a process of triangulation combines discourse analysis of the National education plan for police and the three videos from the campaign “Are you ready for a bigger assignment?” [“Är du redo för en större upgift?”], together with the narrative interviews of six police officers. The findings show that masculinity works as a normative standard in police work and influences narratives and role constructions of crime and justice. Policewomen are excluded through the diffusion of stories about risky situations, discursive gendered boundaries and ‘punishing’ feminine practices.

This article explores the impact of sexual orientation on the housing practices of individuals self-identified as LGB+ in Athens, Greece. In Greece, welfare state was always inadequate to cover people’s social needs. On the contrary, the family proved to be resilient as a welfare agent covering also the housing needs of its members by employing related strategies. The support comes ‘with strings attached’, and this includes parents’ demands and wishes upon the lifestyle of the dependent children. These demands have strong gender and sexual connotations imposing a heteronormative life trajectory, which may clash with the desires of LGB+ family members. In order for them to continue receiving support they are ‘pushed’ to employ strategies regarding their ‘coming out’ or sexual identity’s concealment process. In this paper, 16 semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with a double focus: a. the housing pathway of the respondents, and b. the strategic decision of coming out or staying in the closet to benefit from the family welfare.

This article reports on how gender shapes the work of university science faculty. Theories of gender as a social system are used to disentangle how individuals, social interactions, and institutions (re)produce inequality by sustaining occupational gender segregation in higher education science. The study uses qualitative data from an ethnography of six teaching faculty at a large research-intensive public university in the United States. These teaching faculty, largely women in a department in which the majority are men, are ineligible for tenure and institutionally positioned as having lower status. The disadvantages are experienced in different ways across all the women on the teaching faculty. In contrast, men on the teaching faculty are recognizable as scientists and are by default treated with respect. As such, they are elevated regardless of their skill as teachers. This study offers a theoretical contribution to the current understanding of gendered occupations by suggesting that the experiences of the science teaching faculty can be conceptualized as chutes and ladders. Ladders are mechanisms reserved for the elevation of men. Chutes are reserved for women because regardless of how women approach their work, the gender system is constructed to hold them back.

This study utilizes interviews from 22 young female engineers from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds as they first entered the White and male-dominated engineering labor force with the goal of examining: (1) how these women endorsed a gender- blind frame that characterizes their workplaces as fundamentally meritocratic, and alternatively, (2) how they named gender as relevant or salient to experiences and interactions at work. Drawing on the insights of intersectional scholars to answer the previous questions, the study calls attention to how the invocation of these frames differed for women of color compared to their majority White female peers. Results revealed that most respondents strongly endorsed the idea that engineering workplaces are meritocratic and that their gender is not relevant. However, there is also evidence of racial divergence in the themes expressed. For example, some White women expressed a narrative contradictory to meritocracy, discussing their workplaces as like family, while in contrast, women of color often expressed uncomfortable experiences of standing out. Overall, the results suggest that female engineers’ tendency to disavow, either explicitly or implicitly, that discrimination and bias occurs in their workplaces, likely contributes to continued gender and racial inequality; subsequently, programs and interventions to facilitate awareness of inequality are critically needed.

Denna undersökning granskar hur representationen av de kvinnliga karaktärerna sker i Barbiefilmen Barbie Princess Adventure (2020). Granskningen genomfördes genom två separata analyser, en narrativ analys av filmen och en semiotisk visuell analys av de kvinnliga karaktärerna. Undersökningen visade på att filmen representerar en motsägelsefull femininitet. Majoriteten av den narrativa analysen visade på att de kvinnliga karaktärerna var bemyndigande, självsäkra och självständiga karaktärer med både maskulina och feminina egenskaper. I den visuella analysen och i delar av den narrativa analysen framstår karaktärerna som stereotypiskt gestaltade. De sex karaktärerna som granskades konstruerade alla en identitet av hyperfemininitet. Filmen visar på en representerad femininitet med möjligheter till jämställd individualism men i en begränsning av att de kvinnliga karaktärerna har ett hyperfeminitetisk utseende. I slutet av uppsatsen öppnar jag upp till vidare forskning och diskuterar framtiden för Barbiefilmerna. 

Men and feminism is a contentious topic. In theoretical discussions as well as in previous studies, men and feminism have been described as an oxymoron, that being a man and a feminist is a border land position and that it entails experiences of so-called gender vertigo or gender limbo. Still, there are men who identify themselves as feminists and engage in feminist settings, parties and organizations. In this article, I aim to explore how masculinity is constructed and shaped within feminism. The article is based on qualitative interviews with nine young feminist men in Sweden. Using Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology and the concepts of disorientation and reorientation, I analyse how the interviewees experience themselves as men and feminists and how they navigate within their feminist settings. The analysis illustrates that in contrast to previous research, the interviewees articulate an assuredness in their position as men and feminists. However, being a man and a feminist is still a somewhat disorienting position that promotes reflexive journeys through which the interviewees seek to elaborate a sensitive, perceptive and “softer” masculinity. Feminism can be seen as a way of doing masculinity, and the ways in which the interviewees (re)orient themselves in their feminist settings can be understood as processes of masculinity construction. These reorientations position the interviewees in the background of their feminist settings, where they carry out what I call political housekeeping and men-feminism. From this position, they also adopt a perspective of a theoretical as well as temporal distance and articulate themselves as actors in the history of feminism. Thus, the article highlights that feminist men can seek out a masculinity that is positioned in the background yet still experience themselves as subjects in the feminist struggle.

With the growth of esports in recent years, it has become important to study different aspects of thedigital footprints that come with it. Esport is a form of sport competition using video games whereplayers or teams compete against each other using certain games in a competitive environment,governed by rules and regulations. Teams competing in esports work in a similar way as othersports teams. They try to win competitions and build their own fan base. Some fans want tocome closer to the team and other individuals supporting that specific team. Teams create serverson Discord that allows their fan base to interact with each other in a more regulated community.The servers mainly promote the team itself, but they also offer fans opportunities for exclusivecontent and discussions away from public social media channels. Gaming has however been provento offer a toxic environment, specifically against gender minorities. This article investigates howdifferent genders experience toxicity in the more regulated online gaming communities comparedto previously researched areas - multiplayer games, and public social forums.

This article puts intimate partner homicide (IPH) into a process perspective, and describes the situational precursors that constitute the build-up, that is, the first stage of the IPH process that precedes the deed. Fifty court files, from cases involving 40 male and ten female perpetrators, underwent thematic analysis. Our findings indicate that the build-up phase of an IPH is complex and encompasses several different features, of which some are clearly gendered. The results point to an escalation during the build-up: of possessiveness and violent behaviour in male-to-female cases, of alcohol/drug abuse, of mental health problems and/or of fears for the future, often connected to separation. Concurrent with previous research we found that women often kill in the context of their own victimisation. There were, however, other situations and motives that also stood out as being pertinent.The practical implications of these findings are that practitioners should be particularly attentive to escalation of known risk factors, especially male possessiveness, and be aware that (the victim wanting) a separation may initiate escalation with lethal consequences.

Key messages: IPH is a process that builds up over time.

Risk factors for IPH should be contextualised, in order to determine which are pertinent at the time of the crime.

The build-up to an IPH is complex, with several overlapping features. Some of these are clearly gendered and thus differ between male and female perpetrators.

Despite the growing research regarding sports fandom culture, the related knowledge concerning non-West female fans, specifically Muslim women, is next to absent. By drawing on gender theories alongside transnational feminism, this study critically investigates the experiences and practices of female football fans in Iran, a country with exclusive social features. Through semi-structured interviews, 25 women and 5 men talked about their lived experiences. Findings suggest that the female fandom stream is empowering, although female fans still have to overcome gender stereotypes to demonstrate the authenticity of their fandom. Also, the state still restricts female activities in different ways, such as stadium entrance ban and shortage of media coverage. However, women have followed their desires and applied strategies to remain fans and support their teams afar. In this way, alongside multiple practical opportunities, they have converted social media to a virtual stadium to demonstrate both their support and consent.

Using sexuality education (SE) to solve different social problems has become a defining discourse to explain what SE does. Since the late 19th century, SE has been a tool for combating and preventing social problems stemming out of venereal diseases, unintended pregnancies, low sexual moral, sexual deviance, low sexual- and reproductive health, gender inequalities, sexism, sexual exploitation, sexual violence, and a general lack of knowledge about the body and sexualities. Although SE has developed differently in various countries and taken on different directions, it continues to appear as a solution to prevent and solve a multitude of social problems. But if solving and preventing problems is the very core and purpose of sexuality education, I think it is suitable to ask how policies and educational programs ‘knows’ what problems to solve?

In response to this simple, yet important question, this paper, without denying the importance of SE, considers how the problem-solving ethos is discursively constructed and underpinned through problematisations. In this paper I use the WPR-approach to target the aftermath of policy. By departing from a policy that is already produced, I show how the Swedish Government first announced a policy reform and eight days later adjusted their message to correspond with public opinion. The empirical material consists of the announcement, a debate article by the Minister of Higher Education, and a selection of 20 newspaper articles published during the eight days in between. This paper provides an empirical example of how a problem-solving discourse underpins and narrates coherence between policy (solutions) and problems. In this paper I also consider how problematisations can work as a soothing technique of acceptance in which policy, as a solution, is in need for problems. 

The paper presents data from a larger thesis project that aims to explore how sexuality education (SE) take shape by interviewing teachers about their experiences of working with SE and observing a working group assigned to develop teachers’ practices concerning SE. In the teacher interviews I was surprised that some teachers began to talk about their own embodiments of age, gender, and sexuality to describe how they were able to teach and talk about sexuality and relationships with their students while others found it more difficult for the same reason. In this paper I ask, how do intersections of age, gender, and sexuality interfere teachers practises in teaching SE.

This paper illuminates how teachers are influenced by age, gender and sexuality in teaching about sex and relationships. In this analysis grounded in feminist theory, age, gender and sexuality are considered to be enacted as doings. Six interviews with teachers working with sexuality education in K-12 schools in Sweden were chosen from of a larger body of material consisting of 21 interviews with professionals engaged in school-based sexuality education. The six interviewees were selected because they explicitly addressed how teachers’ age, gender and/or sexuality come to matter in the classroom. Findings show how male and female teachers organise their teaching in relation to normative expectations of age, gender and sexuality. In sexuality education, the diverse life-courses of (hetero)sexual women offer a wide range of pedagogic possibilities for female teachers to address issues of sexuality, consent and relationships whereas male teachers are constrained to doing safe(r) forms of masculinity by directing attention away from their bodies and experiences. In understanding these results, I argue that the figure of the tant has been key in forming the pedagogic backdrop to Swedish sexuality education, hence embedding a normative ‘who’ in the ‘how’ to teach sexuality education.

Författare: David Fogelström

Handledare: Kutte Jönsson

Examinator: Tomas Peterson

Nyckelord: Styrkelyft, kvinnors upplevelser, hegemoni, hegemonisk maskulinitet, heteronormativitet

Syfte: Syftet med det här arbetet är att genom semistrukturerade intervjuer undersöka och förstå kvinnliga styrkelyftares upplevelser av att utöva en traditionellt mansdominerad sport och hur dessa upplevelser kan förstås i relation till hegemonisk maskulinitet.

Metod: Genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med kvinnor som tävlar i styrkelyft har jag samlat in och analyserat data för att med denna kunna besvara frågeställningarna.

Teori: Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för arbetet är hegemonisk maskulinitetsteori.

Resultat och slutsatser: Studien visar att det finns såväl likheter som skillnader mellan styrkelyft och andra mansdominerade sporter i hur kvinnor ser på att utöva en traditionellt mansdominerad sport och deras upplevelser av detta. Exempel på likheter är positiva effekter på självförtroende, viljan att vara förebild och bryta mot könsnormer samtidigt som kvinnor upplevde att de blev ifrågasatta och inte tagna på allvar i samma utsträckning som män. Skillnader var upplevelsen av att inom styrkelyft kunna utmana sig själva och hur tävlandet inom styrkelyft var en stark motivationsfaktor. 

Uppsatsen syftar till att bidra med mer kunskap om könsdiskriminering och sexuella trakasserier riktade mot kvinnliga fastighetsmäklare i Sverige. Frågor som besvaras är: Hur uppfattar fastighetsmäklarna organisationskulturen på sina arbetsplatser? Förekommer könsdiskriminering och sexuella trakasserier i branschen? I så fall, i vilken omfattning och hur ges det i uttryck? Studien genomförs med hjälp av en kvantitativ metod i form av en webbenkät, besvarad av kvinnliga fastighetsmäklare i Sverige. Resultatet visar att fastighetsmäklarna anses ha en kultur på arbetsplatsen som tillåter samtal om arbetsmiljö, men däremot är det mindre än hälften av dem som känner till om arbetsplatsen har ett tillvägagångssätt för hantering av bristande arbetsmiljöhälsa. Studien visar också att könsdiskriminering och sexuella trakasserier förekommer i fastighetsmäklarbranschen mot kvinnliga fastighetsmäklare. Undersökningen visar att den som diskriminerar och/eller trakasserar är en chef, kollega/branschkollega och/eller kund/spekulant. Handlingen ges i uttryck både verbalt och fysiskt. 

Across an ever-changing political landscape, and in the midst of Brexit developments, this edited collection draws our attention to women's participation in transformative democratic processes, and captures how UK women were made 'other' in the political environment created by Brexit. 

Chronicling the work of diverse feminist activists connected to women’s equality organisations, grassroots networks and migrant communities who between them strove to further intersectional equality, and ensure women’s voices were heard across the UK during the Brexit campaign, the first section of this book highlights the impact of populist discourses on subjective identities and their place in public and political life. Through reflective conversation, autobiographical writing and poetic pieces, the authors transform their experiences of being 'othered', showcasing instead a new found community and collective agency across intersections of identity. In the second section, researchers and activists analyse how the socio-economic, political and legal changes unleashed by Brexit are undermining women's equality in the UK. Considering how to defend feminist concerns when facing populist political leadership, the authors make the case for constitutional reform which will enable direct female participation in the democratic process. Looking ahead to the post Brexit landscape, and the unknowable future let loose by Covid-19, the contributors offer us a glimpse of the world they are striving to create.

The purpose of this study is to examine, based on a qualitative semiotic image analysis, how feminist aspects are used by companies for commercial purposes. The starting point for the study is a critical feminist perspective with a theoretical background in the complex discussions about postfeminism, commodified feminism, femwashing and femvertising. Of which an in-depth study of postfeminist discussions of individualism, girl power and empowerment. The study will examine the razor blade company Estrid's two campaigns: Shave and misbehave (2019) and Save. Shave. Whatever (2020). The aim of the study is that in a tripartite analysis consisting of; body hair, shaving and the environment show how today's neoliberal society often uses political and social issues for a capitalist and commercial purpose. Based on the campaigns, analyze how Estrid portrays women, body hair and feminism in relation to their products.

The result that emerged from the analysis showed that Estrid strives to break stereotypes and express feminist values within its brand strategy. This is because it repeatedly shows normalization around body hair. The conclusion also showed that as a brand, it is difficult to produce a genuine brand strategy, with feminsit values. Estrid's focus on feminist statements in their campaigns is influenced by postfeminist discussions, with messages such as individualism and empowerment, where new expectations of women are created instead of focusing on criticizing gender structural inequalities.

En kvalitativ semiotisk analys har genomförts av reklambilderna från skateboardtidingen Big Brother. Syftet med undersökningen var att studera reklambilderna i Big Brother med fokus på representation av kvinnorna. Därav följde frågeställningen "Hur representeras kvinnan i reklambilderna från Big Brother utifrån ett semiotiskt perspektiv". Urvalet av materialet bestod utav fem reklambilder där bildernas tecken analyserades kvalitativt med fokus på blick och posering. Genom att fokusera på dessa tecken i undersökningen blev huvudresultatet att kvinnornas karaktärsdrag blev reducerade till att bli betraktade av en utomstående blick. Därmed konnoterade dessa tecken Big Brother läsare som väsentliga betraktare i kvinnornas representation. 

The content of school textbooks significantly affects students’ attitudes towards themselves, other people and society. Especially ESL students since they are not only learning a new language but also receiving knowledge about the given culture and lingua-cultural identity. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore gender equality issues in the ESL classroom, grades 4-6. A mixed method approach is applied, combining textbook reviews of 3 different textbooks used by 4 ESL teachers in Swedish elementary schools. The focus of the textbook reviews will be to explore how gender is addressed in the different books and if gender biases occur. This will then be combined with data from semi-structured interviews conducted with the 4 ESL teachers who are using the books. This paper will investigate how teachers navigate around gender when teaching with the use of the books as well as what their opinions are on gender sensitivity and representation in the books. The findings are coded through a thematic analysis to discover differences and similarities between the textbook reviews and the interviews. The results show that gender equality work in Swedish school textbooks has come a long way, women are far more represented than before and many different cultural representations are visible, but not as far as including all the aspects of gender that are needed to meet the fundamental values of the curriculum. Gender biases such as stereotypes, permeate all the reviewed books and gender-expansive people, as well as their pronouns, are invisible. Moreover, the teachers' opinions did not correspond all the way with my findings since most teachers believed the books to be gender sensitive and representative which was not found to be the reality. 

In a time when patriarchal culture became entrenched in Sweden’s national project through laws, reforms and norms, abortion was a common issue for female writers. This article examines how women’s reproductive choices are depicted in Swedish fiction – written by under-researched working-class and middle-class women writers – published in the 1940s and 1950s. I examine the ways in which these texts either challenge or reproduce the legal and social norms of the time concerning reproduction and abortion, as well as their depictions of gender and class differences pertaining to reproductive choices. I also touch upon the reception of literary depictions of abortion. I build on research that deals with the role of the nation in the construction of gender, and the importance of motherhood to national identity. My analyses show that abortions and reproductive choices should be regarded as closely related to the nation and its role in the construction of gender and power relations, where men’s power to honor or dishonor women(’s bodies) is central.

Gender norms are normative societal expectations regarding the behaviors of girls and boys that can guide bullying behavior. As early adolescence is a time when peer relations become increasingly important, it is critical to understand the peer relationships of adolescents and what is considered gender non-confirming behavior. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze Swedish girls' and boys' perception of gender differences in bullying. Twenty-one Swedish adolescents (8 girls and 13 boys) took part in four focus group discussions separated by boys and girls. Data analysis was conducted using qualitative content analysis. "Expectations and needs to fit the norm" emerged as the main category as all categories emerging from the analysis related to boys' and girls' understandings of how expectations, strategies, expressions relating to bullying and the need to belong vary depending on gender. Further, girls and boys expressed admiration for each other's ways of coping with bullying indicating that also coping strategies are associated with expectations based on gender. For schools and adults to be better equipped to meet the needs of girls and boys and understand how these needs are expressed, adolescents voices regarding gender related bullying can be seen as helpful tools to develop strategies to work with gender norms and gender expectations. In light of the results of our study, schools may have work to do when it comes to the awareness of norms and attitudes and how they are expressed as these may be a foundation for bullying, among both staff and students.

In this article, we suggest approaching writing as a vulnerable practice marked by an unstable boundary between bodies: bodies of text and bodies of writers. We present an exercise-method that we refer to as Monster Writing, which we have developed in order to engage with these instabilities as well as in order to address experiences of difficulty, anxiety and uncertainty in relation with the text and writing process. Though the writing process can at times be exciting and thrilling, and at other times perhaps a little tedious and mundane, for some it also presents (more than) occasional encounters with one's own insecurities, shame and doubt. We argue that this potentially more painful relationship between writer and text should be awarded more attention in scholarship on writing, and that a way of doing so is through the framework of feminist theory on vulnerability, embodiment, and the monstrous.