The struggle for an equal society in terms of equal rights, opportunities, and obligations has long been fought in Sweden and has resulted in Sweden emerging as one of the world most equal societies according to UN rankings. This paper attempts to, with the knowledge of Sweden´s pre-eminence on the equality rankings, to examine why the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) remain a male-dominated workplace, despite decades of stated equality aims. There is thus a question left unanswered as to the nature of this apparent discrepancy. This paper aims to examine the nature of this discrepancy, what has been done to implement equality and what challenges lie ahead for the SAF on the issue of gender equality. Through a theoretical base primarily consisting of an institutional disposition this paper uses a qualitative text analysis study of the public material which is available regarding the SAF´s gender equality work, mainly the official appropriations documents for the SAF, as well as the annual reports from the SAF to the government. Gender and equality have been studied in the past in numerous political science journals both in the context of western armed forces in general and the SAF in particular. Remaining is a need for more research problematising the concept of gender equality within the armed forces and in its relationship to the government, which this paper attempts to explore. Indications indicate that the challenges the government and the SAF must face involve defining what they mean by equality as well as clarifying what the policy objectives are as there is a risk that the implementation of the policy will fall completely or partially if they remain abstract, unclear and/or contradictory.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-199323 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Sjöström, Filip |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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