Sustainable Gender Equality Policies – A Question of Governance?

Gender equality has for many years been identified as one of the corner stones of modern Swedish society. In fact, according to the latest EU gender equality index Sweden is number one in gender equality, scoring 74.3% as compared to the EU average of 54%. The current government elected in 2014 has even declared itself a ‘Feminist Government’. Therefore, it might come as a surprise that an evaluation made by the Swedish National Audit Office in 2015 showed that Swedish gender equality policies suffer from severe problems. The evaluation showed that a large government investment on gender equality 2007-2014 had too little focus on sustainability, too little space for strategic thinking, and did not have a proper structure for dealing with the results. A similar assessment was addressed in a Commission Report on Gender Equality submitted to the Gender Equality Minister in 2015. In the views of the National Audit Office as well as the Commission, the Government needs to strengthen the long-term gender equality policy perspective in order to effectively implement time-limited initiatives and project as well as improve the governance of Swedish gender equality policies. This paper will map the institutional structure of gender equality policies in Sweden, including the system of governance, and assess the ways in which the Feminist Government has tackled the criticism raised by the National Audit and the Commission with regards to governance. In particular, the paper aims at discussing problems and potential for improvement in the proper implementation of gender equality policies in relation to governance.