Constituting gender and gender equality through policy. The political of gender mainstreaming in the Swedish forest industry

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-10-2017-0208
• Published date: 20 November 2018
• Date: 20 November 2018
• Pages: 763-779
• Author: Elias Andersson,Maria Johansson,Gun Lidestav,Malin Lindberg
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity, equality, inclusion

Constituting gender and gender

equality through policy

The political of gender mainstreaming in the

Swedish forest industry

Elias Andersson

Department of Forest Resource Management,

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden

Maria Johansson

Department of Business Administration, Technology and Social Sciences,

Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden

Gun Lidestav

Department of Forest Resource Management,

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden, and

Malin Lindberg

Department of Business Administration, Technology and Social Sciences,

Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden

Abstract

Purpose –In Sweden, gender mainstreaming policies have a long political history. As part of the national

genderequality strategyof the Swedishforest industry,the ten largest forestrycompaniescommitted themselves

to gender mainstream their policies. Limiting the impact of policies and the agency of change, the purpose of this

paper is to focus on the varied and conflicting meanings and constitution of the concepts, the problem and,

in extent, theorganisational realities of gender mainstreaming.

Design/methodology/approach –In both, implementation and practice, gender mainstreaming posse

challenges on various levels and by analysing these documents as practical texts from the WPR-approach.

This paper explores constructions of gender and gender equality and their implications on the practice and

the political of gender mainstreaming in a male-dominated primary industry.

Findings –The results show that the organisations themselves were not constituted as the subject of the

policy but instead some of the individuals (women). The subject position of women represented in company

policy was one of lacking skills and competences and in the need of help. Not only men and the masculine

norms but organisational processes and structures were also generally invisible in the material. Power and

conflict were mainly absent from the understanding of gender equality. Instead, consenting ideas of gender

equality were the focus. Such conceptualisations of genderequality are beneficial for all risk concealing power

structures and thereby limit the political space for change.

Originality/value –By highlighting the scale of policy and the significance of organisational contexts, the

results indicate how gender and gender equality are constitutive through the governing technologies of

neoliberal and market-oriented ideologies in policy –emphasising the further limiting of space for structural

change and politicalization within the male-dominated organisations of Swedish forest industry.

Keywords Governance, Politics, Policy, Forestry, Male-dominated organizations, Subjectification

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

In Sweden, gender mainstreaming as a strategy has been practised since the 1970s. On strategic

level, it is the main approach used in national gender policies since the Platform for Action at the

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 37 No. 8, 2018

pp. 763-779

© Emerald PublishingLimited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-10-2017-0208

Received 24 May 2017

Revised 4 October 2017

16 January 2018

6 March 2018

Accepted 11 April 2018

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/2040-7149.htm

This paper was produced within the following two R&D projects funded by Sweden’s National

Innovation Agency VINNOVA 2013-2015: “Gender equality as joint strategy in the industry”, managed

by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and “From macho to modern: Gender equality in

the forestry workplace”, managed by Luleå University of Technology.

763

Gender and

gender

equality

United Nations Fourth World Conference on WomeninBeijingin1995.TheECOSOCAgreed

Conclusions 1997/2 define mainstreaming as “[…] the process of assessing the implications for

women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas

and at all levels”(UN, 2002, p. 1). The strategy of gender mainstreaming is now also promoted

by the European Union (EU) (EIGE, 2016). However, in the Swedish context, the strategy has

been labelled “gender equality mainstreaming”or “gender equality integration”,which alters the

meaning in that it is not gender, but gender equality, that is being mainstreamed (Rönnblom,

2008). This emphasises the plural and paradoxical nature of gender mainstreaming. Although

Sweden is one of the highest ranking countries for gender equality (WEF, 2016) and

mainstreaming has been the official strategy for over two decades, there are still variations in

policy and implementation within different fields and sectors on both national and

organisational level (Hudson and Rönnblom, 2007; Rönnblom, 2005; Sainsbury and Bergqvist,

2009; Wahl and Höök, 2007). This is often due to specific organisational conditions, structure,

histories and the nature of policy as an ongoing process of governing, involving plural and

contingent practices (Bacchi, 2017). One sector with limited implementation is Swedish forestry

(SweGov, 2004). This is an industry of significant importance as a net exporter and in terms of

regional growth (e.g. Hyttinen, 2002), but also has one of the most gender-imbalanced and

gender-segregated workforces in the Swedish labour market (Lidestav and Sjölander, 2007).

Gender equality work in male-dominated primary industries has been shown to face specific

challenges and obstacles due to the fact that men have numerically, culturally and symbolically

dominated these industries and their organisations throughout history (Abrahamsson and

Johansson, 2006; Andersson, 2012; Andersson and Lidestav, 2016; Brandth and Haugen, 2005;

Johansson et al., 2017, 2018; Johansson and Ringblom, 2017; Lidestav and Sjölander, 2007).

In the forest industry, this is evident in work and organisations continuingto be associated with

certain notions of masculinity (Brandth and Haugen, 2000, 2005; Johansson et al., 2017;

Lidestav and Nordfjell, 2005; Lidestav and Sjölander, 2007). Today, more than 80 per cent of

employees in Swedish forestry are male (SFA, 2014).

During the past decade, the topic of gender equality has entered the agenda of the forest

industry through self-criticism and an ambition to speed up the process of implementing gender

equality in Swedish forestry (SweGov, 1994, 2004). In early 2011, the Swedish Ministry of Rural

Affairs launched a strategy for gender equality in the forest industry entitled “Competitiveness

requires gender equality”(SweGov, 2011). The strategy and the policy process surrounding it

partly illustrate the shifting political context that has brought about a change in the function and

work of policies (construction of politics). The policy process shows the characteristics of network

design, where different actors discuss and agree on taking responsibility for cer tain objectives

(Heywood, 2002). This represents a more all-encompassing process of change in society that has

been described as a transformation from “government”to “governance”, i.e. from an institutional

and hierarchical practice of policy to a network practice based on the participation of a number of

other actors besides the state (Pierre and Peters, 2000). This changing process of formulating and

implementing politics, with, e.g., increased economic growth as the overall goal (cf. Rose, 1999a),

also shapes the problematisation and subjectification of policy (Bacchi, 2009, p. 16f ),

which through text create “subject positions”(Foucault, 1990), and has implications on

organisational level. This shift is reflected in the new strategy for Swedish forestry, where gender

equality is stated as being instrumental for development and thereby an integral part of the

ideological political goal of economic growth (cf. Holmgren and Arora-Jonsson, 2015; Pettersson,

2007, 2008; Rose, 1999b; Rönnblom, 2009). The national strategy for gender equality includes an

aim to gender mainstream the policy documents of the ten largest companies in the Swedish

forest industry. On an organisational/operational level, these practical texts “form the object of

whichtheyspeak”( Foucault, 1972, p. 49), i.e. inequality is “treated”and constitutive of what is

defined as equality (including its objects/categories). These texts thereby constitute key sites

where governmental objects and partial realities are produced (Foucault, 1986, p. 12f ).

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