The European Union's work on equal opportunities for women and men can be described historically in three eras; equal treatment, positive action and, most recently, the gender perspective. In accordance with the latter, gender mainstreaming is the latest method in dealing with these issues. Its aim is the implementation of the gender perspective in all policy processes and to challenge the male norm that permeates all decision making. EU:s work on equal opportunities, though, persists not only of gender mainstreaming but has a double approach also including special actions.This thesis bases its argumentation on discourse analysis of communications from the Commission regarding employment and social affairs. It argues that the two components of the double approach; gender mainstreaming and special actions, are incompatible and even becomes contra productive put together.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how teachers work and reflects on gender education in preschools. We also want to take part of how teacher?s thoughts are reflected in the physical indoor environment and how the environment is designed by reviewing the rooms furnishing and the selected materials. We will do this by visiting a number of preschools located in Stockholm and New York. We have chosen three questions to get the answers on our purpose.How teachers reflect around gender pedagogy are, and how the thoughts are expressed in the practical work.How the teachers communicate with their co-workers about gender pedagogy.How the teachers own thoughts and reflections on gender pedagogy have been expressed in the physical indoor environment where the children stay during the day. We have used interviews and observations as a method to gather the information that we needed to answer our questions of the thesis.

This paper presents a study of the attitudes and values related to gender young people have. Five people, four women and one male, all about eighteen years old, were interviewed about their attitudes and values related to gender.Although the study is relatively small, the results are compatible with other published studies and indicate that young people, without consideration to their sex, has a very traditional view on gender. The study also indicates that the attitudes seem to be established very early in life. Probably the most important factor to determine the attitudes and values of the child is the parent's opinions. The result show that the interviewed persons did not think their attitudes and values towards gender where influenced by media, TV etc...

The study aims to evaluate how teachers in my research have reasoned regarding gender and gender equality, notions on ethnicity, and specific conceptions or constructions on ?swedish-ness? and ?immigrants?. The vital point in this study will be to examine the relationship be-tween gender equality, ethnocentrism and racism. The question formulation that I have ap-plied are: On what grounds teachers conceive the concepts of gender and gender equality? How do teachers experience their work with gender equality in remedial classes? Do the teachers that work in remedial classes experience any obstacles in the pursuit of gender equal-ity in their daily work? I have used the method of qualitative interviews with five teachers in remedial classes from five different schools.

The purpose of this essay is to find out how gender upholds in a classroom, both by students as well as the teacher. The procedure has been to observe the relationship between students and also the teachers. The observations is analysed according to theories of gender and a discussion about why gender is maintained follows. The conclusion of the result is that gender is being preserved in different ways, but also the contrary ? students and the teacher oppose it.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how gender in Islam and Hinduism are described in textbooks for high school. The study was conducted using a qualitative content analysis and also using a feminist gender theory and postcolonial feminist theory. All textbooks are written or revised after 2011 when The Swedish National Agency for Educations? new curriculum came into force. Previous research in this area shows that it is most common that gender is treated in isolated parts within the chapters, but that there are textbooks that allows the gender perspective permeate the entire text.

The subject of this paper is to examine the view of diversity among ten teachers and three principals in the Swedish compulsory school. The purpose is to investigate how they relate to the diversity and in what ways it is involved in their work.The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieus basic ideas of habitus, capital and field are used as a theoretical starting point. The study is mainly based on interviews supported by literature in the subject area.The findings show that diversity is associated with ethnicity among all informants. The drawn conclusion is that this is partly due to the mediated picture but also since ethnicity mainly serves as a starting point in the literature..

This essay focuses on men?s construction of feminism and gender and views on equality between the sexes. The purpose of the essay is met through interviews with eight men on their thoughts and constructions of these issues. The answers from the interviewed men were analysed with a radical feminist and gender perspective approach. The sources used in the analysis of the material, in the aspect of gender, were from the work of Judith Butler, Robert W.

Thirty years of gender equality politicsFrom women?s work to gender mainstreamingThis Bachelor thesis examines how the Swedish state has practiced gender equality as a political project during 1972 until 1999 through the budget bills, using a ?What?s the problem represented to be?? approach aiming to uncover which discourses policies are based on. The method also studies what assumptions underlie policy problems, what is left as unproblematic within the policies and what effects are produced by specific problem representations. A central question for the thesis is what has remained and changed within Swedish gender equality politics. The history of the Swedish welfare state is presented as a background on how gender equality policy has affected the everyday life of women and men.

The aim of this study is to examine the opinions of eight 12-year old boys and girls about two comics; Sabrina ? tonårshäxan (Sabrina ? teenage witch) and Spiderman. Do children see gender differences in the two comics? Do boys and girls identify with the heroes in the comics and does this affect the children's own gender socialisation. We interviewed four boys and four girls from different parts of Sweden.

In 2009 transgendered persons were included in the Swedish law against discrimination. Prior to the inclusion a commission made an investigation of the necessity of such change in the law and how it could be designed. This essay focuses on the discourses regarding gender that appear in the law and the report written by the commission. Using theories by Judith Butler and discourse analysis inspired by Norman Fairclough it identifies two main discourses regarding gender: a two gender discourse and a queer discourse. The two discourses meet in the studied material in an antagonistic way, a conflict that is solved by separating the two and making one part of the law focus on gender and one on transgender.

This study has been conducted as a literary analysis of four chapter books for children in the early years of compulsory school: Magister Tutnäsa, Vilken fullträff, Astrakan, Sune och tjejhatarligan, and Alva och Dum-Julia. The aim has been to analyse four teacher characters from a gender perspective. The study has focused on the teachers? personal characteristics and whether these are typically female or male. Another aim has been to study how the character reinforces or runs against stereotyped gender patterns.

In this study we have chosen to explore if there is still signs of gender typing in the two news programmes Rapport and Nyheterna. By using a quantitative survey as a method we have investigated if there are any differences between the sexes and their roles.The two main questions where:How does the representation look when it comes to the numbers of women and men?In what extension is the representation gender typed?Due to different theoretical points and former research we have seen that journalistic subject and gender often tends to go hand in hand. When it comes to other participants, such as subjects of interviews, earlier research has shown that experts most often are men. Whereas women often participate as ordinary people, such as mothers or students.

Sweden is seen as one of the world?s most feminist societies. In January 2009 all grounds of discrimination were merged into a common law; Diskrimineringslagen. This paper examines representations of gender discrimination, linked to feminist perspectives, in the Parliamentary debate on Sweden?s new discrimination legislation through a discourse analysis.

The purpose of this study was to examine gender depiction in picture books in preschools. Our experience is that many picture books contain old-fashioned gender stereotypes. During the analysing process, we used the following theories: Yvonne Hirdman?s theory about the stereotypic gender contract and Lev Vygotskij?s theory about experiences increasing our ability to fantasize. We read through 154 picture books in two preschools and categorized them into two categories: normative and non-normative books.