Society needs to find new ways to utilise its resources in the best possible way in order to enable satisfactory services for its citizens in the long term. This is particularly important in sparsely populated areas, and in cities and municipalities with a declining population. This study contributes to this field by analysing a project for collaboration between the rescue service and the home-care service that has been introduced in a number of Swedish municipalities. The collaboration is intended to ensure welfare and safety for citizens, to guarantee a more efficient use of municipal resources, and to contribute to improved emergency management and civil protection. 

The rescue service and the home-care service are two clearly gender-coded occupations that also operate on gender-coded workplaces and places of work, which in our research project proved to be an important aspect of the (un)success of the collaboration processes. Furthermore, we argue that too little attention has been paid to the ways place affect the doing of gender in organisational studies. An overarching aim of the paper is therefore to contribute to gender studies of workplace and places of work, and more specific to discuss gendered obstacles and possibilities of the collaboration, in relation to place and work.