Sweden's gender equality work has historically been a success in many ways, but honour-based violence and oppression is not debated or identified as a Swedish social problem. What is the effect of differentiating between different social problems that fall into the same category? The present thesis aims to deepen the understanding of how men's violence against women is understood at a time when Sweden is considered to be in the forefront of gender equality policy issues. The present thesis therefore examines how honour-based violence and oppression is defined in Sweden, and how Swedish authorities work to prevent and combat the violence. By examining the image of victims of honour-based violence, on which the definition and the work are based, power dynamics within the discourse are also made visible. By using critical discourse analysis as a method and by using theoretical concepts, two government reports on honour-based violence and oppression in Sweden, and a handbook aimed at professionals in the school system are analyzed. The present thesis shows that the Swedish authorities' definition makes a distinction between honour-based violence and oppression, and men's violence against women. It is mainly explained as a problem based on culture, unlike men's violence against women, which is described as a social problem. This is made visible by Swedish authorities through a focus on foreigners in the work of preventing and combating honour-based violence. The definition and the work analyzed in the present thesis contribute to making it more difficult for victims of honour-based violence to identify themselves as "Swedish". Throughout the texts there is a stereotypical image of both victims and perpetrators of violence as being foreigners: people with dark colored hair and dark colored eyes. It is important to analyze and problematize how Swedish authorities choose to express themselves but also how they choose not to. In this way, we can critically examine how authorities contribute to the construction of a social reality and also reproduce unequal power dynamics in society.

Extant research concludes that SMEs tend to be highly dependent on the local institutional environment when internationalizing. In relation to that, international business literature accentuates the lack of studies that aim to understand how government support influences SMEs' international business performance. This further justifies the current inquiry for conducting more diverse scientific research in order to better describe and evaluate how governments should apply and effectively utilize their support toward internationalizing SMEs. Based on that, the aim of this study was to first identify the approaches that Kalmar based SMEs undertake to internationalize. Second, to identify the current initiatives implemented by the local governmental agencies toward the internationalization of these firms. Third, to identify how the governmental agencies in Kalmar could potentially improve the internationalization support towards the local SMEs. By fulfilling these aims this study was able to answer the overarching research question of How could the Swedish governmental agencies better contribute to the development of the internationalization process of their SMEs at the regional level? International business literature, internationalization process theories in combination with the available knowledge concerning the local institutional environment were utilized to conduct a thorough theoretical base for this study. The theoretical base laid the foundation for the constructed conceptual framework that was later utilized to collect and analyze data derived from five local SMEs and four key governmental agencies. This research project implemented a qualitative methodology and a multiple case study design. The data were collected through ten semi structured interviews. As an outcome, the findings of this study concludes that the identified prevailing internationalization process traits in combination with the uncovered improvement elements for governmental internationalization support, positively influence the configuration between the SMEs internationalization and the local institutional environment. This further contributes to achieving understanding concerning how Swedish regions could foster the internationalization process of their SMEs. Finally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to address the issue of governmental endeavors toward the internationalization process of Swedish SMEs.