The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of how professionals in social assistance experience challenges with gender equality work linked to Kalmar County's regional equality goals: Systematic equality work. With hope of contributing knowledge for the continued work for equality between women and men. For this qualitative study, interviews were conducted with five participating social workers and one department manager from two different municipalities within Kalmar county. The results were analyzed based on Genus System Theory and Implementation Theory and previously conducted relevant research results. The results revealed different challenges regarding gender norms that becomes visible in the social assistance. The results also revealed challenges in changing clients own perceptions and the work of drawing attention to violence in close relationships. Participants indicated an over-all similar perception and view of what the purpose and associated results of the Systematic Equality Work would practically present as, which also becomes visible in the workplace. However, there is no actual practical implementation of the regions equality target at this stage. The conclusion of this study is that it´s complicated to work for gender equality because of the challenges revealed in this study. Something that complicates this further is the difficulty to implement gender equality policy, which in turn will make it difficult to break gender norms.