In Sweden, there have been a surplus of men in rural areas and a surplus of women in urban areas for decades. However, the relative difference between rural and urban areas have decreased for about 70 years between the 1930s and the new millennium. We use two approaches to understand the decreasing regional gender gaps: 1. we decompose regional gender balance changes into the main components of population growth/decline i.e international net migration, internal net migration and net births. 2. We employ individual register data, estimate multinomial regressions every year 1991–2016 and analyse how the relationship between gender and the probability of moving from rural areas develops over time. We estimate separate regressions for Swedish-born and foreign-born. After controlling for traditional explanatory variables, we interpret the dichotomous gender variable as a measure of “gender norms”. The question is if we can spot gender norm trends that can help explain the decreasing regional gender gaps over time. We find that the development of net birth rates in rural areas explains the decreased gender gap between rural and urban areas since 1968 while net immigration and net internal migration have rather contributed to increasing regional gender gaps. Despite this, the multinomial regressions do not support changing relationships between gender and the probability to out-migrate from rural areas after 1990 for the Swedish-born. For foreign-born, we find evidence of decreased gender differences regarding the probability to leave rural areas. This contributes to an increased surplus of rural men because foreign-born men have an increased probability to stay in rural municipalities in comparison to women. In sum, we do not find that changing gender norms, for Swedish-born or foreign-born, can explain the decreasing gender gaps between rural and urban areas. In fact, for the foreign-born, we find the opposite.

The allocation of police officers in a country is generally a matter of great public concern. Between 2006 and 2010 police manpower in Sweden increased by about 15 percent, just as the coalition government had promised. However, in various documents the government has been clear about the need of police presence all over the country and a network organization consisting of rural and small municipalities have had as one of their main goal to ensure that there are permanent police personnel in all municipalities. In this article the allocation of police resources as well as police-recorded domestic burglary in rural and other municipalities are being analysed. The overall conclusion is that rural areas have not gained any increase in police numbers since 2006. Crime in general is lower in these communities but in relative terms increases over time have been as large or even larger in rural and small municipalities compared to other municipalities. In 2015 Sweden will see a new form of national police organization. To what extent this political reform will ensure police presence in rural and small communities is still a key question.