How do municipalities and county councils work with gender mainstreaming? What tools are used and which are the conditions and obstacles in the working process? Gender mainstreaming has been an official strategy in Sweden since 1994. In all policy decisions at all levels, a gender perspective shall be integrated. This will ultimately have an impact on the citizen level. The essay shows that despite the fact that the strategy has been official for 21 years, it is not used everywhere. I examine how the county council and municipalities in the county of Västmanland are working with gender mainstreaming. In Västerås, there is much work going on, on the basis of the strategy. While in other municipalities, no work at all can be found. Within the framework of gender mainstreaming, the municipalities and the county council are using a set of tools. There is talk about several conditions and obstacles in the work with gender mainstreaming, where knowledge is a recurring element. This makes the study particularly interesting when we get an insight of how much the work within gender mainstreaming can be separated for each municipality.

This thesis is about whether the political majority has an impact on gender mainstreaming at the committee decisions. Gender mainstreaming is the main strategy in Sweden in order to increase equality. It has been the dominant strategy for over 20 years, but gender equality is still not achieved. Political majority could have an impact on how municipalities work with gender mainstreaming. I study three municipalities, the municipality of Örebro, the municipality of Umeå and the municipality of Jönköping and how decisions have been made in the committee responsible for preschool and primary school in each municipality. Therefore, I study in this thesis if there are any similarities and differences between the municipalities with gender mainstreaming and if political majority can have an impact on gender mainstreaming. I have chosen to use a comparative case study to compare the gender mainstreaming of these three municipalities, using a qualitative content analysis. The analysis is based on the municipalities' gender equality plans, strategic plans and meeting protocols using the Municipal Population Model and the CEMR-declaration (Council of European Municipalities and Regions). The conclusions of the analysis are that there are similarities and differences in how municipalities use gender mainstreaming in their decisions. The similarities depends on that all municipalities are based on the same strategy and that everyone is based on the CEMR-declaration and the differences are that they have formed the goals different. The conclusion is that political majority does not have such a major impact on gender mainstreaming. Keywords: gender mainstreaming, municipalities, political parties, CEMR-declaration