Important starting points for gender equality

The Swedish Prison and Probation Service (Kriminalvården) conducts its activities in a gender-separated manner, with separate facilities for women and men. Women's institutions are usually smaller units, which leads to the fact that the daily cost of care for women is higher than for men. At first glance, it may seem that incarcerated women thus receive a greater share of society's resources than incarcerated men. The operation of the correctional service must provide inmates with meaningful employment during their time in prison and promote their adaptation in society after release. In the work operation, the inmates work and it must, among other things, contribute to increasing the inmates' ability to understand working life and labor market conditions. In this way, work drives can increase employability and thus re-establishment in society after serving a sentence.

Since the women's institutions are often smaller than the men's institutions, it is more difficult to offer a wide range of work operations based on the needs of each individual. This leads to a higher degree of women engaging in other employment that does not provide the same work life experience as work operations. Based on this analysis, the Prison and Probation Service assessed that this was an unreasonable gender difference, to the disadvantage of women. They simply needed to strive for women to have the same access to this type of support as men do. One measure was to redistribute resources through targeted investments to the work operations in institutions for women. The investment resulted in an increase in the percentage of admitted women in the workforce, and in 2020 it was for the first time at the same level as for men.

Kristianstad University has successfully worked with redistribution of resources. In connection with an addition in the regulatory letter to consider gender equality when distributing research funds, Kristianstad University changed its resource distribution model, as approximately 70 percent of the resources were allocated to men. The change meant, among other things, that Kristianstad University halved the time allotted for research for professors (from six to three months), docents (from three to 1.5 months) and lecturers (from two to one month).

In addition to research and teaching merits, collaboration and the previous year's performance in relation to the time researchers had set aside for research were also rewarded. The change resulted in approximately 60 percent of the research funds being distributed to women and approximately 40 percent to men (in 2019), a distribution that fairly well corresponds to the gender distribution at the university. You can find out more about this in our report Jämställdhet i akademin (Gender equality in academia) (2020).

Since 2020, the Swedish Pensions Agency's annual report includes a gender equality report of its management costs. The table shows the costs of administering the systems and benefits for which the Pensions Agency is responsible, divided between women and men. With the help of this arrangement, the Pensions Agency can begin to link the use of resources with gender equality. It is a good starting point for further analyses of the agency's impact on gender equality and it provides an opportunity to follow developments in the outcome over time. The table is based on data and key figures that are already used in the pension authority's reporting. So they have not had to produce any new measurements or new data to compile this table.

A quick look at the records can provide insights into analytics:

• The costs of benefits such as housing allowance and elderly support are higher for women than for men. Possible explanations are that women have lower pensions and are more often survivors. If the processing of housing allowance becomes underfunded so that applications and payments take longer, then it affects a group of mainly female pensioners who are already in a tough financial situation.
• The item for customer service is a large item of SEK 69 million. The entry for the My Pension website is lower at SEK 37 million. If the agency were to scale back customer service via phone and refer to its website to a greater extent, we can see here how it would turn out from a gender equality perspective. Among those who need help by telephone, 60 percent are women. Among those who use the web, 54 percent are men.

In total, the figures show that, overall, the Pensions Agency has greater costs for women than for men, but also that this is connected to different conditions for the different groups. Contributing to gender equality is not always the same as reaching 50/50 in the use of resources. The table instead makes it possible to formulate problem statements and goals based on gender equality analyses, and to ask the question: how can our use of resources contribute to equality to a greater degree?

(*The "orange envelope" in Sweden, known as "orange kuvertet," is an annual statement sent to individuals by the Swedish Pensions Agency (Pensionsmyndigheten). It contains important information about the state of their pension and is intended to help individuals understand and plan for their retirement.)