Taking the temperature of gender mainstreaming efforts

In order to tackle gender equality issues at a societal level, cross-sectoral collaboration is essential. Other areas that could benefit from a structured, sector-wide approach include men's violence against women, which connects to areas such as crime prevention and sexual harassment.

Agencies with responsibility across entire sectors—such as the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), the Swedish National Agency for Education, and the National Board of Health and Welfare—have significant potential to promote gender equality at the societal level through the influence they wield over other actors’ work. This is particularly relevant at the local and regional levels. The government should therefore more consistently integrate a gender perspective into mandates given to agencies where gender equality could contribute to fulfilling the objectives.

“This may involve mandates where gender equality is not the primary focus, but where a gender perspective helps agencies to include gender in their analysis and reach wider segments of society. For instance, incorporating a gender perspective into civil preparedness assignments enables agencies to develop plans that take account of the differing life circumstances of women and men,” says Bosse Parbring, Head of Unit at the Swedish Gender Equality Agency.

The support leads to improvements

Our analysis shows that our support improves knowledge and strengthens the capacity of agencies and higher education institutions to work systematically with gender mainstreaming. Examples include improved internal collaboration, increased competence among strategic roles, gender equality efforts being embedded in more parts of the organisation, clearer direction and objectives, and enhanced analysis and follow-up practices.

“Evaluations of close-to-practice, process-oriented support show that it is valuable and has produced tangible results. One example is the support that contributed to the development of guidance for identifying and addressing economic abuse, now used by the Swedish Enforcement Authority,” says Sara Jonasson, investigator at the Swedish Gender Equality Agency.

Challenges and the importance of governance

The results also highlight important progress in gender equality work within higher education institutions across Sweden. At the same time, there are still challenges in gender mainstreaming. Many institutions have taken time to establish a structure for this work, and further challenges remain, such as embedding it in core activities and achieving effective follow-up.

“Political steering and government mandates—such as those found in appropriation directions—are seen by most institutions as critical to maintaining momentum. However, many also experience excessive micromanagement and too many overlapping mandates. Several institutions describe this as ‘goal congestion’ and express a need for greater clarity regarding how different mandates relate to one another,” says Stina Malmén.

Final reports for the JiM and JiHU assignments are due in April 2026. Before then, JiM agencies and JiHU higher education institutions will submit interim reports on the results and impacts of their gender mainstreaming work in December 2025. Ahead of this reporting, we will provide support through seminars in collaboration with the Swedish National Financial Management Authority and Statistics Sweden.

“This is the final year of these assignments, and we emphasise the importance of governance to achieving results—both internal governance within institutions and agencies, and governance from the government side. We also underline the need for long-term commitment and sustainability in this work and propose new follow-up assignments to continue the momentum once the current ones conclude,” says Sara Jonasson.

Read the reports here 

• Interim report for JiHU (in Swedish) 
• Interim report for JiM (in Swedish)