Sweden is to be considered one of the world's most equal countries. Equal rights that are based on laws and regulations, access to public platforms and equal school for all despite gender. The Swedish school, and like all other parts of society strive for gender equality. It states quite clear how the school's gender equality work should be prioritized. However, there are studies that show that the sexualized language in schools is becoming more and more severe. During the Me too-movment (2017) it became clear that teachers and students have been subjected to sexual harassment. With that said, there aren’t many studies asking teenagers how extensive they consider the school's gender equality work to be.      This study aims to draw attention to attitudes around the school's work of gender, gender norms and gender equality. The study also aims to create a frame of reference of how well these cross-disciplinary concepts are integrated into the school's other core subjects based on the students' own attitudes. This has been done through a quantitative web-survey with the goal to explain how teenagers´ attitudes are established and reproduced. Based on the results of the study, we can see that boys and girls to some extent have the same attitudes and perception towards what is considered masculine and feminine. How gender is created also has an impact, and the conception specific gender roles that are created is primarily negative, especially according to the group of girls. In general, teenagers believe that the scope of gender equality work is either deficient or at best mediocre. The conclusions that can be drawn from this study are that it is important that gender equality work has to be expanded and that it is to those who are to take part that of the information, in this case the teenagers, that should be turned to for ensuring that the work that is actually done is received.

Hip-hop as a cultural phenomenon has gradually taken on a position as one of the post popular music genres in recent history. A form of music that still strongly relies on its roots as an artform for black males. Which has generated an excluding culture that enhances the dominating norm of masculinity. In regard to Sweden’s case of being an egalitarian country and even so having a hip-hop scene that reflects a different type of discourse in accordance with the dominating masculine norm. This generates an interest in how Swedish hip-hop artists (both female and male) construct gender from 2001 to 2021 which this thesis seeks to contribute to understand. Through critical discourse analysis which aims to facilitate the understanding of song lyrics through a three-step analysis of text, discursive practice, and social practice. Through six albums from 2001, 2011 and 2021 the interpretation and analysis came to an understanding that norms and structural circumstances seeks to exclude women and enhance a continued masculine music industry. With variations in the order of discourse with an underlying will of empowerment and autonomy.

Boys perform generally inadequately compared to girls in Swedish schools. The biggest gap is shown in the artistical and practical subjects, no less in art class. When comparing the grades in the art subject of students graduating ninth grade the schoolyear of 2021/2022, the statistics show that most girls got C or higher, while a majority of boys got C or lower. This isn’t unique to this specific schoolyear and has been a reality for a long time. The overall purpose of this study is to investigate the correlation between the statistics and boys’ attitude towards the art subject and to get a deeper understanding of their perception of art classes. The study focuses on the male students' perception of the art subject in the light of gender and norms. When analyzing the discourse in the interviews, the results show that male students appreciate and value the subject, but still perceive it as a subject for girls. In an effort to follow gender norms they use humor to distance themselves from subjects they perceive as feminine-coded. The conclusion of this study suggests that the male students create a counter action against femineity in an effort to create a masculine identity that ultimately reflect negatively on their approach to the art subject.

This study is based on a qualitative method to investigate how female police students and female police officers experience gender norms and how they are attributed gender roles during their education and in their workplace, which was done with semi-structured interviews. In summary, our study concludes that the female police students and female police officers are aware that gender norms exist within their profession. Because of these norms gender roles are assigned, and depending on one’s gender the individual is expected to have specific characteristics, which both produces and reproduces gender roles. Because of these norms and structures, gender differences arise that affects women, partly how others expect them to act and how it affects their work assignments.

In this dissertation, I develop theoretical models and an empirical study of the role of social interactions, the evolution of social norms, and their impact on individual behavior. Although my models are consistent with individual utility maximization, they generally emphasize social factors that channel individual decisions and/or shape individuals' preferences. I apply this approach to three different issues: labor supply, fertility decisions, and intergenerational transfers, generating predictions that are more consistent with observed empirical patterns of behavior than standard neoclassical approaches that assume independent preferences, perfect information, and efficient markets. In the first essay, I explain the long-run evolution of working hours during the 20th century in developed countries: the substantial decline for the first three quarters of the 20th century and the deceleration or even reversal of the fall in working hours in the last quarter. I develop a model of the determination of working hours and how this process is affected by both the conflict between employers and employees and the employees' desire to emulate the consumption standards of the rich reference group. The model also explores the effects of direct and indirect policies to limit hours advocated by political representations of workers such as trade unions or leftist parties. In the second essay, I study the coevolution of gender norms and fertility regimes. Since the 1990s, a new pattern of positive correlation between fertility rates and female labor force participation emerged in developed countries. This recent trend seems inconsistent with conventional economic approaches that explain fertility decline as a result of the increasing opportunity costs of childrearing, predicting a negative correlation between fertility and women's labor force participation. To address this puzzle, I develop a model of the evolution of gender norms and fertility in various economic environments influenced by the level of women's wages. Randomly matched spouses make choices related to fertility - labor supply and the division of household labor - based on their preferences shaped by gender norms. In the model, norm updating is influenced by both within-family payoffs and conformism payoffs from social interactions among the same sex. The model shows how changes in economic environments and the degree of conformism toward norms can alter fertility outcomes. The results suggest that the asymmetric evolution of gender norms between men and women could contribute to very low fertility, explaining the positive correlation between fertility and women's labor force participation. Finally, I estimate the effect of exogenously introduced public pensions for the elderly on the amount of private transfers they receive. There has been a long debate whether public transfers crowd out private transfers. Previous empirical studies on this issue suffer from the endogeneity of income that contaminates estimates. I use an exogenously introduced public transfer, the Basic Old Age Pension in Korea, to test the crowding out hypothesis. A considerable proportion of the elderly population, especially women living without a spouse, do not experience the crowding out effect and moreover, among those who do, the size of the effect is relatively small. The results support the redistribution effect of the Basic Old Age Pension targeting the poor elderly in Korea.

The Swedish Armed Forces (SwAF) have been making internal efforts to enrol more women through changes in legislation and mandatory conscription, since the adoption of Resolution 1325 in the Swedish Parliament at the turn of the century. Since the alterations, an upward trend of female recruits as well as women making careers and reaching high ranking positions, has been identified. Consequently, raising other issues about how SwAF is making efforts to adapt their prevailing male dominated organization towards their now increasing female personnel.  To achieve the objective of understanding how male normativity is experienced in the Armed Forces, the study derives from explorative semi- structured interviews with female recruits, as well as previous studies conducted in the area, departing from a constructivist and feminist theoretical approach. The result supports, that women are nevertheless experiencing obstacles and are expected to repetitively prove their positions as soldiers, in terms of bodily differences, materiality, language, comradery, and community. It also speaks for continued efforts to broaden the Armed Forces' inclusivity, challenge gender norms and customs, and improve accessibility for female recruits, and female military personnel.

Trots att kvinnlig representation inom specialidrottsförbunden ökat de senaste åren råder det oklarheter om idrotten är mer jämställd. Lika representation är nämligen inte synonymt med jämställdhet, eftersom kultur och historia påverkar vem som bestämmer över agendan. Studiens syfte blev därför att undersöka hur genusnormer påverkar och tillämpas inom idrottsförbund, samt studera om det finns en genusdimension i hur makt fördelas i förbundsstyrelsers arbete. Det genomfördes åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer inom fyra förbund i två olika idrotter. Deltagarna var både män och kvinnor med olika befattningar inom förbunden. Det som kunde urskiljas ur resultatet var diskrepansen mellan de manliga och kvinnliga deltagarnas åsikter, samt skillnaden i jämställdhet mellan idrottens olika nivåer. Slutsatsen för studien är att det på nationell nivå finns en tydlig jämställdhet där kön och genusnormer inte påverkar beslutsprocessen. Därutöver kan det även fastslås att den bristande jämställdheten främst utövas på föreningsnivå. / Even though female representation within Swedish sports associations has increased in recent years, there is uncertainty as to whether sport is more equal. Equal representation is not synonymous with equality, because of the effect culture and history have on who decides the agenda. The purpose of the study was determined to examine how gender norms affect and are applied within sports associations, as well as to study whether there is a gender dimension in how power is distributed in the work of association boards. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted within four associations in two different sports. The participants were both men and women with different positions within the unions. What could be seen from the results was the discrepancy between the opinions of the male and female participants, as well as the difference in equality between the different levels of the sport. The conclusion of the study is that at the national level there is equality where gender and gender norms do not influence the decision-making process. It can also be stated that the lack of gender equality is mainly practiced at association level.

Jeanette Winterson’s debut novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is regarded as an epitome of feminist fiction. The novel centres around Jeanette, a young homosexual girl, and her mother Louie who does not accept her daughter’s sexuality. Just like most mothers in feminist fiction Louie is described, by other scholars, as a one-dimensional character who forces normative femininity upon her daughter and defends patriarchal structures. However, this thesis argues that subtle instances of characterisation create tensions in Louie’s character, especially in regard to gender norms and heterosexual norms. Although Winterson’s novel has been explored from several perspectives most scholars focus on Jeanette. Few scholars have attempted to examine Louie and how she is characterised. Thus, Louie’s character is largely unexplored. To analyse Louie, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan’s narratological theories on characterisation are used, such as characterisation through direct definitions, actions, and speech. By showing that Louie is marked by tensions she is characterised as a mother who both upholds and challenges patriarchal structures. Since Louie cannot only be perceived as an agent of the patriarchy, she is consequently a complex character.

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