Gender equality is a political issue that has gained a lot of support in the last decades. Researchers have however pointed out that gender equality has a wide variety of understandings.SKL (Sveriges kommuner och landsting) is an organization that looks after the interests of local authorities and county councils in Sweden. SKL has by the government been granted 145 million Swedish crowns to support gender mainstreaming at a local level. During a period of three years, 2008-2010, funding has been given to 89 projects for this purpose.The aim of this study is to examine what meanings are given to the term ?gender equality? in these projects.

The law of 2006 about Equal treatment, has been put in place to stop discrimination of students, example based on their gender. The law has an important function to increase the equality of opportunity between girls and boys in school. Therefore the teacher has an imported roll for raising the equality of opportunity between girls and boys in school. That?s why it?s imported to work gender awareness.

The purpose with this essay is to examine how principals, teachers and parents look at a possible cooperation between preschool-teachers and parents regarding the promoting of gender equality, with children's literature as a tool. The literature documentation presents theories concerning the application of gender and the gender-order in society as well as the influence society has on children?s development of a gender-identity. Parent?s participation in the gender equality-work in preschool describes, as well as its significance.

Our purpose with the study was to investigate how the image of a mother?s role is created by the magazines Mama and Husmodern. Mama is an existing magazine, but Husmodern ceased to exist in 1988. Both magazines focus on children, fashion and housework. We wanted to know what qualities you need to become a good or a bad mother.

Among those who graduate from the various schools of Social work in Sweden are a great majority women. At the same time men are sought after in the work field.  But not just to level up the equality between the sexes, but also to fill a gender specific niche to counter up a need for male role models. But a closer look at this need and the types of functions set to cater for it shows that male role models as a concept vary between contexts. In this study we examine the concepts and the practices of male role models in three different settings: a municipal social care center offering young boys male bonding activities; a non-profit organization warding young people from drug abuse and criminal behavior; and last, a long term residential home for young boys between the ages 13 and 19. Our research shows that the concept of the male role model vary between the organizations and less so within.

Social sustainability is often regarded as a solution to social problems in general. In this study, on the contrary, social sustainability is conceived as a socially constructed concept and the result of a certain way of looking at the world, the human being and the ideal society. The study centers around Kinda municipality in the southern region of Östergötland and a few of its elder inhabitants. What meaning and substance social sustainability is contained with as well as the effects that are produced by these conceptualizations is explored and analyzed. Also, the study examines the encounter between political policy?s and judgments on the one hand and the experiences and preferences held by the municipality?s elder inhabitants on the other..

Following is a study of fathers 'experiences of balance between work and home life. The method the researchers used was based on qualitative interviews aimed at describing father?s own experiences and values, which affects them. The researchers chose to specifically study situations where the fathers were faced with situations where their children needed to be cared for in the home because of a cold or similar illness since this is a situation that directly affects the time that was meant for work, but now risk being moved to areas of life that the researchers define as home life. This is to see whether the respondents felt that this situation affected the balance between work- and home life.

The purpose of this study was to look at the common opinion about children in Cambodia. By interviewing the professionals in different help organizations we studied the common opinion about children in general and the common opinion about children who are exposed to sexual trafficking. The ambition of the study was also to see if the common opinion about children in Cambodia affects the help that is available for the children who are exposed to sexual trafficking.This is a qualitative study including semi structured interviews with seven professionals who work with vulnerable children. The interview guide focused on the themes: children?s needs, sexual trafficking, children?s rights, childhood, children?s sexuality and gender.

The aim of this study is to examine marriage as something both desirable and normal in three popular novels from the 1860s about marriage: Rosa Carlén?s Agnes Tell: en äktenskapshistoria (1860), Marie Sophie Schwartz?s Alma eller De moderna äktenskapen (1860) and Sara Pfeiffer?s Aurora Trampe (1867). Using a theoretical perspective from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, I have analysed the novels as being producers of, and resistance against, norms.The good marriage is partly depicted as a utopian vision in the novels, which therefore functions as fantasies for the readers. But it is also depicted as a realistic possibility. Though difficult to achieve, the main characters reach the goal through individual improvement towards correct behaviour.The question for the main characters is not whether they are going to marry or not, but how to make their marriages good ones.

The aim of this study is through a teacher perspective illustrate and analyze how preschool teachers apprehend children´s learning in relation to the preschool yard.The main research questions asked were:How do preschool teachers apprehend the preschool yard in reference to it as a place?In what way do preschool teachers use the preschool yard in their work with the children?How do preschool teachers view the preschool yard and the significance it has on children´s learning?The research is based on data collected through interviews and observations at four different preschools in the same municipality. The research views place and people as social constructions, a theory of knowledge that is based on the view that the world, places and people are constructed in relation to each other. This perspective as well as previous research is used for analyzing the data collected through a qualitive study based on interviews. The data analyzed show that the preschool teachers involved in this research apprehend the preschool yard as a central part in the learning of young children.

This thesis investigates gender equality at a few Swedish elementary school libraries, and how school librarians at these libraries work with gender equality issues. It is a semi-structured interview study conducted with staff at seven elementary school libraries. Several policy documents state that the school should be a gender-equal environment, but previous research shows that there is still a lack of gender equality, and that staff often treat boys and girls differently. It also shows that boys and girls are often portrayed in a gender-stereotypical way in children?s literature.

This is an empirical study based on Physical Education and health (PE) teachers' experiences and builds on, for the study, significant literature. The study is about PE teachers? consideration of gender in the assessment as well as in the selection of lesson content. Semi-structured interviews were employed as method for the data collecting process. Four teachers were interviewed, teachers of PE in elementary and upper secondary school with varied length of professional experience and ages.

My purpose in this essay is to show how the staff in an institution for young women with a drug addiction, are looking at themselves as "normal" and the young women as "abnormal", and to analyse how sex and gender are made, in interaction with sexuality and class.The essay is based on interviews and a participating observation. The study is made on a compulsory institutional care institution for young women with a drug addict. To analyse the material I use theories by Beverly Skeggs and Judith Butler.In the study I show that the staff in the institution define themselves as "normal" and intend to act as models for the clients, which are described as "abnormal" in terms of being destructive, boundless and sexual. In making class and gender the staffs efforts to make clients learn domestic values and to make their bodies feminine are shown to be central processes. Sexuality is by the staff seen as something happening only between men and women, and defining relations between men and women as always sexual creates gender.A central tension that I show in the essay is that between normal and abnormal, both in relation to differences between the staff and the clients and in relation to the staffs roles as both models of normal life and of violent and violating keeps of order.

During the last decade executive coaching has become an increasingly popular method of management development. Few studies have been conducted within this area, especially in Sweden, and little has been said about the construction of management in executive coaching. The purpose of this master?s thesis is to study executive coaching from a social constructionist perspective, focusing on the construction of management. The two research questions are: How is management constructed in executive coaching? How can we understand the construction of management in executive coaching? Additionally, we identify gender as a social construction of importance and thus include a gender perspective in our analysis.

Similar to work of the feminist movement in the seventies, you nowadays can see an increased level of textile art expressions with feminist standpoints. In this thesis I compare two textile artists from each time period. These are Maria Adlercreutz with her composition I hennes ögon bevaras folkets ljus from 1972, and Lisa Anne Auerbach?s exhibition Chicken Strikken from 2012. The aim is to put the two artists in a contemporary context and explore their feministic approaches in the textile field.