<p>Abstract</p><p>The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the Swedish political parties have been discussing gender politics since 1970 to nowadays, in order to see which problems and solutions that have been suggested by the parties to increase the representation of women and the equality between the sexes. The theoretical framework is constructed by theories of women´s representation, gender politics and women’s interest.</p><p>To describe how the discussions about gender politics have been between the different parties, the methodological foundation consists of an ideology critical textual analysis of the political programs from the Swedish parties.</p><p>The analysis confirms that the discussions about gender politics and the political representation of women increase over time. The most important issue of equality is the lack of women´s rights and possibilities in the labor market as a consequence of women´s responsibility of home and childcare. The analysis also shows that parties which discuss women as a category and the underrepresentation of women also point out the importance to increase equality between men and women.</p>

This thesis investigates how women's political representation influences foreign aid utilization. While recent contributions show that the impact of foreign aid is highly dependent on the recipient government, there is still limited research on the relationship between women's political representation and aid utilization. Existing work within the research field of female political representation suggests that women are more likely to prioritize resource allocation towards healthcare and education and less likely to prioritize the military. Thus, women’s political representation is predicted to work as a moderating effect on aid utilization, whereby increases in female representation is associated with more aid resources being allocated towards healthcare and education and less to the military. To test the relationship(s) implied, this thesis employs multiple regression analysis on a time series data set of 102 aid-receiving countries from 2000-2017. The hypothesis that women's political representation has a moderating effect on aid utilization could not be supported by the regression analysis. The results do however indicate that female representation in the recipient countries influences government allocation in general.

Abstract The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the Swedish political parties have been discussing gender politics since 1970 to nowadays, in order to see which problems and solutions that have been suggested by the parties to increase the representation of women and the equality between the sexes. The theoretical framework is constructed by theories of women´s representation, gender politics and women’s interest. To describe how the discussions about gender politics have been between the different parties, the methodological foundation consists of an ideology critical textual analysis of the political programs from the Swedish parties. The analysis confirms that the discussions about gender politics and the political representation of women increase over time. The most important issue of equality is the lack of women´s rights and possibilities in the labor market as a consequence of women´s responsibility of home and childcare. The analysis also shows that parties which discuss women as a category and the underrepresentation of women also point out the importance to increase equality between men and women.