To Örebro University

Segregation and poverty in multi-family housing areas is a challenge facing many European cities creating a new policies for the post-welfare states. Due to privatization, retrenchment of the welfare state and increased immigration Sweden is not exception. City politics with different large scale projects to prevent further stigmatization and bad reputation of a specific housing area has during the last 10-15 years become a national and local policy in Swedish cities and municipalities. Ideas of deliberation and inclusion is common in the govenance of these projects. Immigrant women are mostly described as a target group as they are considered being passive, isolated and lacking the skills and knowledge to behave as the responsible, acitve citizen and consumer of good and sustainable housing. In this paper we present data from a case-study of a Swedish local housing policy being a part of multi-level governace regarding energy efficiancy and refurbishment of public housing. 40 per cent of the families have a background in Asia/Africa. Gender and etnicity play a crucial role when Swedish women in the name of care in socal projects face the immigrant women.

The aim of this chapter is to describe the relationshipbetween formal Swedish partner-ships of the European Regional Development Fund and informal gendered networking related to the policy of women’s entrepreneurship. In choosingtwo cases, the counties of Jönköping and Jämtland, we wish to investigate similarities and differences related to the aim of the study. The process surrounding the Structural Fundprojects is an illustration of multi-level governance. The formal institutions support the idea of gen-der-inclusivenetworks. In our empirical data we find that there areseveral different kinds of networks and networking. On the one hand, the relationship between the for-mal, institutionalised partnership and its elite network and women in business seems weak, whilst on the other handbeingstrong amongst male Triple Helix actors. The social dimension of networking seems more important than we had expected; thus local setting and geographical proximity to other agents is vital. This contrasts withthe organisation of the large Structural Fundregions which includes several counties. It also contrasts with“created” networks and arenas in whichpeople with no priorcon-nections are supposed to interact. Our empirical studies indicate that sphere-bridging exists on different levels, sometimes on the target group level and sometimes on the operational level. When writing project applications or running projects, however those networks are embedded in a firm and bureaucratic structure.

In this article, the theory of ‘state feminism’ is applied on the area of regional development policy, supplementing existing research about state–citizen relationships in northern and southern Europe. Based on Swedish data, it is argued that the former alliance between the women's movement and the welfare state has been transformed as a result of new steering methods in regional development policy in a way that is best understood as a paradox. This paradox includes both stronger and weaker relations. The public support to Women Resource Centres (WRCs) in Sweden is used as an example of ‘state feminism’. The ability of the WRCs to affect policy has changed over time, however, due to the adoption of new steering methods based on networks and market-orientation in Swedish regional development policy. The conclusions induce further development of ‘state feminism’ theory, making it more up-to-date with the prevalent interaction between women's movements and European welfare states.

How is energy conservation defined in a local renewal project of a multifamily housing area with 40 per cent immigrant population? Gender and ethnicity , life style and daily life frame the dis-cource of energy conservation. Governance relates to inclusion in networks and who represents whom? The depolitization of how the good everyday life create a space for technological experts to frame the ideas as if gender, class and etnicity did not exist. Will agents work with the social aspects of the renewal project and the question is if they manage to change the frame to include non-Swedish lifestyles.

In this paper we highlight and discuss a Swedish equality paradox in two different spheres: entrepreneurship and politics. We focus on the EU Structural Funds and women entrepreneurs’ access to resources through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Combining human geography and political science, we draw upon network and partnership theory posing questions concerning the room for manoeuvre for women entrepreneurs to gain access to relevant networks, to create new networks in order to establish relations with EU related partnerships, and to gain access to the process of allocating EU structural fund financial resources.