Feminism som byråkrati beskriver utvecklingen av svensk jämställdhetspolitik. Främst behandlas idén om jämställdhetsintegrering. En historieskrivning, men också en analys. Från början av 1990-talet fram till idag. Vilka frågor och krav har kunnat ställas inom ramen för denna politik? Och inte minst, vad har gjorts omöjligt?

City-centric planning in Sweden has led to the dominance of stereotyped visions for both urban and rural areas within policy and planning practice. To challenge such a limited understanding, this study conceptualizes the rurban void. The aim of this article is to operationalize the rurban void as an analytical framework that extends beyond the urban and rural conceptual divide and can clarify how a neoliberal and city-centric planning practice in Sweden de-politicizes the urban and rural outside. The article discusses the potentials of a perspective that challenges urban privilege and opens up opportunities for the re-politicisation of spatial transformation. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalisation have become an integral part of public governance. While digitaltechnology is expected to enhance neutrality and accuracy in decision-making, it raises concerns about the statusof public values and democratic principles. Guided by the theoretical concepts of input, throughput and outputdemocracy, this article analyses how democratic principles have been interpreted and defended in EU policyformulations relating to digital technology over the last decade. The emergence of AI policy has changed theconditions for democratic input and throughput legitimacy, which is an expression of a shift in power and in-fluence between public and private sectors. Democratic input values in AI production are promoted by ethicalguidelines directed towards the industry, while democratic throughput, e.g., accountability and transparency,receive less attention in EU AI policy. This indicates future political implications for the ability of citizens toinfluence technological change and pass judgement on accountable actors.

The public sector and public administrations are important foundations in democratic states and an autonomous public sector that protects public principles is needed for a political system to be democratically legitimate. Here, efficiency, impartiality, equality, and transparency are central guiding principles and values. The introduction of automated decision-making (ADM) in the public sector affects traditional public principles and values in several ways. For example, transparency is a central challenge as the decisions are implemented by algorithms instead of humans and thus become more difficult to explain for the individual citizen. Also, equality has been put forward both as something that is gained through ADM, and as something that is at risk when ADM is implemented. This chapter provides an overview of the challenges that the implementation of ADM brings to the public sector, including transformations of public sector decisions, the discretion of civil servants, and democratic principles and values.

This article is an examination of what consequences our passion for critical research has had on our relation to Gender Studies as a discipline. The examination begins with the exclusion from, and escape from, another discipline, to the space and possibilities offered by Gender Studies. This move is, however, also an escape into a new discipline and a new order of normativities. We move on to identifying these normativities: 1) Gender Studies as constituted through a compromise with research ideals, where, for example, the concept gender (genus) is depicted as more inclusive than other concepts, and Gender Studies as less critical and political than Feminist Studies, 2) the dogmatism of sisterhood, as an identity based limitation for research, and 3) the constant mix-up with, and adaptation to, both governmental gender equality politics and activist organisations outside the university. In order to exist, Gender Studies has, in some way or another, compromised with all three of these normativities. We do not assume that this development is automatically bad or good – the normativities do not always reinforce each other, incongruences and gaps sometimes appear when they meet, and a compromise also implies that there still remains something of that which is ‘other’, of that which was ‘too much’ and had to be compromised. However, for the moment they seem to interact with a neo-liberal governmentality that restructures politics, activist demands, and identifications as well as research focus and university organisation. Hence, we see a need for a re-organisation of academic feminism, using Gender Studies as a platform, but constituted by neither the traditional object of study (“women/gender”) nor the idea of infinite inclusion and flexibility (“intersectionality”). Instead we propose that passion for critical research (including responsibility of that research), organised around the untimely idea of a non-competitive collegium, constitutes the guiding rules for a non-nostalgic and non-identical academic feminism.

Both early and more contemporary feminist utopias and dystopias present us with alternatives that are both disruptive and transgressive of the existing order, making us aware of the unequal power relations embodied in society that interlock in producing urban space and the subjectivities available to women and other ‘Others’. They highlight the normalizations of hegemonic masculinity and heteronormativity in the city that produce some bodies as ‘normal’ and ‘in place’ and others as ‘out of place’. We discuss the possibilities these utopian/dystopian imaginings reveal for what feminist urban spaces can be, challenging taken-for-granted power relations, hierarchies and systems of exclusion/inclusion. Finally, we consider how envisaging feminist utopias and/or dystopias encourages thinking outside the box and offers a way of contesting dominant discourses: how, by developing a critical approach to what exists, such imaginings may open up changing cities physically, emotionally, environmentally and democratically by picturing (an)other future city. 

Visions of the good future city are important in futures studies and urban planning. However, these visions have been criticised for reflecting Western, masculine, heteronormative values rather than diversity, and only allowing some voices to speak and be heard. This highlights the need to develop methods for bringing in 'other' voices and enabling alternative visions to be articulated that contest the 'straightjacket' of accepted meanings and ways of being in the city. Here, we present one such attempt using transgressing alternatives of imagining the city drawn from feminist science fiction and utopian writings. These were presented to focus groups of women from different backgrounds in two Swedish cities. The aim was to create a welcoming and safe space for meaning-making that encourage the women to re-imagine their subject positions, challenge the accepted ways of being in the city and picture an 'other' future city. This was partially successful in that, in their discussions, the women both accepted and contested the city's gendered norms and power relations. This reflects the difficulties involved in questioning the existing power relations and norms from a subordinate position, emphasizing the importance of further developing this type of approach in efforts to foster more inclusive cities.

This edited volume presents critical scholarship analysing governance practices in diverse jurisdictions in Europe and North America, at multiple scales, and in relation to several different arenas of policy and practice. The contributors address shortcomings in the mainstream literature on governance within the discipline of political science.

The volume as a whole is marked by geographical and topical diversity. However, what the individual chapters have in common is that each considers whether and how gender, racialized identity, and/or other axes of marginalization are visible within the conceptualizations and/or practices of governance under discussion.

Drawing together insights and conceptual tools from both feminist and post-structuralist frameworks in analysing governance practices, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and graduates who engage with feminist and/or post-structural analysis of policy and governance. It will also be of use to critical policy scholars in anthropology, geography, sociology, and women's studies.

The aim of this article is to examine trends of democratic backsliding associated with the long standing reform work on regional institutions and policies in Sweden. To this end, democratic backsliding is conceptualized in a different manner compared to conventional understandings. By doing so, the article highlights a missing aspect in the research on democratic backsliding that concerns how well-intended reforms designed to strengthen democratic institutions can also harbor non-democratic consequences. In Sweden, a new political arena was created when the former county councils were transformed into so-called called regions in 2019. As part of this, the regions have been assigned responsibility for both health care and regional development planning. The overall research problem to be analyzed in this article focuses on the relations between the policy objectives for democracy and regionalist ideas of economic growth that both were central concerns in the reform processes. The results highlight how the governing rationalities in the regional reform processes have changed during the period between 1990 and 2020. The original conception of creating a mini-version of a liberal and representative democracy have turned into a form of democratic backsliding privileging economic goals. The economic rationalities that permeate the political sphere today close the space for articulated different interests and opinions-a dimension that we argue is crucial for any democratic society. We draw two main conclusions: First that the neoliberal aspect of governing is missing in the analysis of democracy at the regional level, resulting in a descriptive discussion of democracy that tend to ignore the effects of the particularly strong emphasis on economic growth. Secondly, that there is a lack of a discussion on democracy that takes the regional level into account, i.e., that the sub-national level should be regarded and thus discussed as a distinctive level of democracy.

This article takes as its starting point two current trends in academia – the promotion of academic entrepreneurship and innovation and the promotion of gender equality – and discusses how different gender equality perspectives are interwoven, or not, into academia’s transformation processes towards entrepreneurial universities. On the basis of an analysis of 26 interviews conducted with personnel at two Swedish universities, the article investigates how concepts of academic entrepreneurship and innovation on the one hand and gender equality on the other hand are constructed and filled with meaning as well as how they are entangled and what effects are produced by this way of thinking and acting. Our analysis reveals tensions between the two policy goals, together with tensions within each goal. An overall conclusion is that articulations and ways of speaking about the policy goal of academic entrepreneurship and innovation were to some extent interwoven with the policy goal of gender equality, especially in the broader perspectives on academic entrepreneurship. However, the articulations of strategies and practice of the two policy goals essentially ran parallel, and were not entangled with one another. This is because strategies or substantial initiatives for merging gender equality into the agenda of academic entrepreneurship and innovation were lacking.

Sverige betraktas ofta, av andra liksom av sig själv, som ett av världens mest jämställda länder och hamnar också alltid i toppen av FN:s och OECD:s jämställdhetsrankingar. Sedan mitten av nittiotalet har jämställdhetsintegrering varit den officiella strategin för det svenska jämställdhetsarbetet, men trots detta startas det fortfarande projekt för att komma igång med detta arbete. I denna artikel problematiseras det svenska jämställdhetsarbetet mot bakgrund av politikens förändrade styrformer där marknadsstyrning i hög utsträckning kommit att dominera det offentliga och där «den rätta kunskapen» allt mer har kommit att ersätta politiska intressemotsättningar. Syftet är att utforska vad som händer med jämställdhetspolitikens innehåll när den inordnas i marknadsbaserade former för styrning och detta görs genom att studera jämställdhetskonsulters arbete. Det empiriska materialet består av elva telefonintervjuer med jämställdhetskonsulter, samt en genomgång av ett tjugotal konsultföretags hemsidor. Intervjuerna fokuserar hur intervjupersonerna upplevde arbetet som konsult; deras drivkrafter, motiv och argument; samt hur de såg på arbetets effekter, möjligheter och begränsningar. Materialet har analyserats med inspiration av governmentalityanalys och med ett särskilt fokus på hur jämställdhetskonsultens position samt jämställdhetsbegreppets betydelse konstrueras.

This article scrutinises how gender equality is filled with meaning in Swedish national policy, and how these constructions could be understood in terms of neo-liberal forms of governmentality. Thus, gender equality is regarded as an empty signifier in contrast to the everyday use of the concept where gender equality often is presented as a self-evident political goal. In today’s society the ideal of the market has become the ideal of the public, and new public management is regarded as the indisputable way of organising the public – a process that also brings with it processes of de-politicisation of politics. By analysing national policy documents that address the doing of gender equality, including gender mainstreaming, the article aims to show what happens with gender equality in this neo-liberal context – including its political consequences. The analysis includes both how gender equality is defined in overall policy goals and in hands-on documents. The main results show that gender equality is transformed into administration and into different forms of administrative techniques. Prominent forms of governing include different forms of auditing, through checklists, evaluations and methodological tools for change. In addition it is also possible to discern a gap between how the problem of gender equality is represented in overall policy goals and the representations when the policy is to be implemented. Problem representations related to issues of gendered power relations are transformed into problem representations that fit the rule of auditing.

The intense attention to how AI technologies (AIT) are increasingly permeating aspects of society as well as people’s everyday lives often ends in a call for ethics. The need for ethical AI, or responsible AI, or trustworthy AI is put forward by scholars as well as policymakers as the answer to the potential risks that the implementation of different forms of AITs could bring. This chapter has the ambition of bringing together the state-of-the art regarding the discussion on AI and ethics in policy – including a focus on the growing strand of critical studies on governing and policy. In doing this, the chapter also demonstrates the analytical merit of a governmentality framework when focusing on the political implications of the ethics discourse. Hence, the chapter focuses on what ethics ‘does’ with and in policy, and what the political implications of these ‘doings’ are. 

Over the past few decades, Sweden has established itself as a "world leader" in gender equality. Alongside this development, Swedish politicians have also initiated ambitious plans that aim to establish the country as "world class" in terms of digitalization. International research shows that women and racialized groups are in a minority in the design processes, that AI facial recognition systems are built with white male faces as the norm, and that digital tools replicate racial injustices. In this paper, we are interested in if, and if so how, gender equality is articulated and thus filled with meaning in national policies on AI and digitalization. The overall aim is to discuss the potential of gender (equality) mainstreaming to challenge systems of privilege in the implementation of AI systems in the public sector. The paper analyses how gender equality is filled with meaning in national policy documents on AI and gender equality. The main findings show that gender equality is turned into a question of lack of knowledge and information, which in turn blocks out an understanding of gender equality as something that is related to gendered power relations.

Purpose – This paper utilizes the concept of innovation as a form of methodological starting-point in order to analyse the gendered meanings of marketization in Swedish universities. The purpose of the paper is to scrutinize how the concept of innovation is produced in Swedish universities, and how these versions of innovation are gendered and related to different understandings of gender equality.

Design/methodology/approach – The analysis departs from a critical perspective to studies of gender equality and is anchored in a critical policy analysis approach – the “what's the problem represented to be? Approach” developed by Bacchi. This approach is used in the analysis of interviews with top-level leaders at two Swedish universities and how they perceive innovation. The results are related to a governmentality framework in order to explain the gendered innovation discourse in academia.

Findings – One of the main results is that innovation is represented in a broad way when discussed at a more abstract level. However, when the discussion becomes more concrete and also related to a gendered understanding of the researchers actually turning their research results into innovations, this broad representation of innovation shrinks. The analysis also shows how a governmentality framework both explains the inevitability of innovation and the difficulties of working for political change for women in the academy.

Originality/value – In analysing innovation as produced instead of taken for granted, this article puts forward a critical understanding of innovation, both in relation to gender and to the inevitability of de-politicisation processes of the neo-liberal audit culture in academia.

Norrland is often represented and constructed as a “typical male” region, a region dominated by rural problems. The “male” power structure is often depicted as a static problem, a part of a rural traditionally bound periphery which cannot be changed. In public discourse, Kiruna is positioned as a town adjusted to men which is a situation in need of change; it is argued that gender equality is a necessity for Kiruna’s survival. Put differently: there are clear ambitions for change. By studying how gender equality is made and how gender equality is produced in different practices, this article studies the implications of these ambitions. A key analytical starting point is that gender equality is regarded as something “made” by various actors in specific contexts. Gender equality is understood as an empirical field filled with meaning, or produced, in different contexts, not as a “fact” that can be measured. With place as an analytical hub, and inspired by Carol Bacchi’s critical approach to policy analysis we examine how gender equality is articulated and how place is produced. Using policy documents, newspaper materials and interviews, we conclude that gender equality is filled with partially different meanings in the three themes, but attractiveness stands out as a central underlying rationality – often in combination with participation and the absence of conflict between women and men. These representations of gender equality create a win-win, a non-conflictual understanding of gender equality, underpinned by an understanding of men and women as different and complementary subjects. In spite of clear articulations of men’s privileged position and women’s subordinate position, the measures suggested for achieving change target the image of Kiruna rather than gendered power relations. We explain this result in the context of overall processes of de-politicisation in contemporary society and by the need for Kiruna to be seen as “good” and “attractive” in order to challenge and avoid reproducing the picture of the Northern periphery as backward and traditional.

Based on present planning projects in the city of Umeå, Sweden, we will in this paper study how imaginaries of the gender equal city is presented, filled with meaning and used in place marketing with the overall ambition to discuss the possibilities and pitfalls of what we call the gender equality planning strategy. The aim of the paper is to discuss the possibilities for changing gendered power relations, as well as other power relations related to class, race and sexuality through an analysis of local initiatives for a good city. The material consists of a case study with a focuson planning projects aiming at creating equal cities, such as improving accessibility in public space, gender aware analyses of the city’s symbols and decorations etc., and includes analyses of interviews, policy documents and media reports. The theoretical framework draws on the discussion of politicization and de-politicisation (Mouffe 2005) in relation to neo-liberal forms of rule where place-making and place-branding are rationalities that risk moving conflicting dimensions in society outside both planning and politics overall.

In planning contexts, safety is often discussed from a women’s perspective. An ideal site forexploring some of the key issues is Umea, a medium-sized town in northern Sweden. Here, attentionto women’s fear of violence greatly increased at the turn of the century, when a single repeatoffender known as the ‘Haga Man’ assaulted several women in the city. People’s (especiallywomen’s) fear of violence came to be seriously recognised, discussed and taken into considerationin the city’s planning. The present research is based on an analysis of empirical data collectedin 2008, through interviews with people who in various ways work to increase safety in Umea. The paper addresses how the informants define the problem of fear of violence in publicspace and the strategies they employ to address it, what could be described as the analyticalpracticeparadox, as the results show the difficulties of integrating gender-aware planning intoplanning practice.

Focusing on imaginaries of the ideal city is an important method to illustrate the power of ideas, imagination, representations and even visions, and how these dimensions influence the way in which cities are organized and lived. In this article, we argue that one current and important city imaginary in a Swedish context is the gender-equal city. In this imaginary, the gender-equal city becomes a symbol for the open, tolerant, bustling, safe city, a city aiming to attract the middle and creative classes. However, at the same time, the imaginary of the ideal, gender-equal city is highly ambiguous. This ambiguity will be discussed throughout the article. Based on present planning projects in the city of Umea in Sweden, we will discuss how the imaginary of the gender-equal city is presented, filled with meaning and used in place marketing, with the overall ambition of discussing the possibilities and pitfalls of what we call the gender-equality planning strategy. The aim of the article is to study how the city of Umea is acting to create a gender-equal city and what kind of imaginaries these practices build on. The material consists primarily of a case study focusing on projects that aim to create an equal city, and also includes analyses of policy documents and media reports. This study illustrates how imaginaries are produced through local projects and different imaginaries provide different spaces for politicizing gendered power relations.

Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, is constructed around a classic industrial source of production - the prosperous mine. The mine has been the overwhelmingly dominant employer in the city and its fortunes have been intimately connected with the city's prosperity. However, massive, continuing expansion of the mine has led to severe risks of subsidence; thus, substantial parts of the city must be moved to assure both the citizens' safety and continuation of the mining. This will be done gradually over the coming decade, and all of Kiruna's citizens will be affected in one way or another. Schools, shops, daycare centres, homes for the elderly and workplaces will all be rebuilt in the new city centre. Drawing on an emotional geographies framework, this paper discusses how people's emotions are understood and given meaning, and even addressed in the planning context of the city transformation that is taking place.

As an organisational form, the project poses a challenge today for the possibility of articulating feminist politics, understood as feminist visions and ambitions. With a focus on women’s organisations working in international development aid, we examine how the project format and its managerial attributes shape the possibility of articulating feminist politics. Mobilising assemblage thinking on a material consisting mainly of interviews with project workers in women’s organisations, we show that these organisations engage in assembly work to fit their activism with the project format, such as translating feminist ambitions into bureaucratic procedures and notions of temporality, activating repertoires of expertise, and adopting marketised approaches to development. We conclude that the project format depoliticises feminist politics, although it does not make the articulation of feminist ambitions impossible. Assemblage thinking is suggested as a suitable framework for feminist research when investigating how contemporary governing arrangements influence the articulation of feminist politics.

Denna rapport är en populärvetenskaplig sammanfattning av en vetenskaplig artikel vars publicering möjliggjorts av stöd från MUCF. Artikeln tar sitt avstamp i den långtgående ”projektifiering” som präglar styrning och organisering av såväl offentlig sektor som civilsamhället. I artikeln studeras projektifieringens effekter särskilt med avseende på hur kvinnoorganisationer påverkas av att arbeta i projektform. Genom att följa hur ett flertal kvinnoorganisationer interagerar med projektformens livsfaser – ansökningsfasen, implementerings- och rapporteringsfasen samt utvärderingsfasen – framgår hur dessa lägger ned ett omfattande arbete för att anpassa och översätta sin egen verksamhet i relation till projektformens särskilda krav. Detta arbete präglas av en anpassning till en teknokratisk logik vilket avpolitiserar den feministiska aktivism som kvinnoorganisationer ägnar sig åt. Projektformens effekter för hur politiskt arbete i civilsamhället bedrivs bör därför noggrant beaktas.

In this chapter we present a broad overview of research on what we call the politics of automated systems of governing (ASG). We define such systems as the enlisting of algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and various utilizations of so called ‘big data’ with the purpose to control, direct, steer or guide something or someone. Drawing on selective parts of a larger systematic review of 1667 peer-reviewed scholarly works dealing with politics in relation to big data, AI and algorithms, we illustrate two things. First, by taking stock of this literature we show its context as we reconstruct seven major themes from a wide range of topics through which scholars investigate ASG. Second, we theorize how the notion of politics can be said to operate along three dimensions as researchers mobilize the concept in relation to ASG across the seven themes, namely politics as ontology, epistemology and ideology.

In this paper, we develop an approach for analyzing the increasingly important strand of research that deals with automated systems of governing. Such systems, which figure prominently in public policy and regulation, are designed to utilize the rapid advancement in computer technology, like artificial intelligence, with the purpose of governing something or someone. Drawing on a large sample of articles we present a comprehensive analysis of scholarly works where these systems are studied as political, rather than neutral, instruments of governing. We find that the current state of the art articulates the politics of automated systems of governing in three ways. Namely, as part of ontological, epistemological and ideological questions. We conclude that future research should investigate the complex forms of marketization nested in these systems, that it should move from theoretical examples to detailed empirical studies and that political science should get more involved with the issue.