To Örebro University

This article investigates the experiences of employees and managers in Swedish companies that offshore IT services to India, focusing on how implementation of offshoring is changing the work organization and working conditions for software developers onsite. Our analysis highlights the fact that the working conditions have been significantly redesigned in several different ways because of offshoring, most obviously due to the need for knowledge transfer between the onshore and the offshore working sites. The study illustrates how employees and managers onsite utilized different strategies for knowledge transfer and how these strategies were more or less successful, sometimes due to resistance from employees. The article concludes that, although offshoring contributed to a separation of conception from execution in these companies, there were few signs of routinization of daily work tasks for onsite employees. Instead, it was the routinized and noncore tasks that were offshored while project management tasks were taken over by onsite staff, which meant that they ended up in a superior position vis-à-vis their Indian colleagues as new global hierarchies were created. Power relations at work, both within firms and between firms, are thus brought to light.

This article reports on reflection-based monitoring tools developed and used in an action research project to improve gender equality in science and research institutions. Several of these tools were developed to facilitate individual and joint reflection from the perspective of the co-researchers involved. The aim of the article is to make the case for the integration of a systematic reflection-based monitoring approach, to describe its approach and theoretical underpinnings that link critical reflection theory with reflexive action learning theory, and to present the details of six monitoring tools so that they can be adopted in other project settings. It also highlights how these monitoring tools stimulated both individual and group reflection and how they facilitated the sharing of knowledge and experience between change agents involved in co-production. The article also shows that the process monitoring approach based on systematic reflection can contribute to successful project implementation and offers several important advantages.

This article explores the experiences of micro change agents for gender equality in seven European Research Performing Organizations in seven different countries. The micro change agents were all participants of an international collaborative project consortium, implementing gender equality plans (GEPs), and funded by the European Commission during 4 years. The analysis draws on empirical data consisting of information submitted by the micro change agents during these 4 years and collected using three different monitoring tools, developed within the project to follow the progress of the implementation efforts, but also to provide an arena for individual and collaborative reflection and knowledge exchange between the partners. The aim of the article is to present a systematic analysis of the change practices that these micro change agents experienced as useful and important for promoting gender equality in their different organizational contexts. A total of six such micro change practices are identified, emerging from the empirical data: 1. communicating, 2. community building, 3. building trust and legitimacy, 4. accumulating and using resources, 5. using and transferring knowledge, and 6. drawing on personal motivation. The findings illustrate the multifaceted character of micro change agency for gender equality, particularly in a time-limited project context with a designated funding period. The results from this study can be useful when developing gender equality strategies, policies and practices and can also be used to empower gender equality micro change agents that face challenges while trying to implement GEPs and promote structural change in any kind of institution.

Childfree in a “child-friendly” society    

“Children are the future!” In Sweden there is a political ambition to make it possible for men and women to reconcile work with parenthood. As in many other countries, there is also a pronatalistic discourse where children are seen as an important contribution to the future nation. How do child-free women and men experience living in a “child-friendly” society? If children are perceived as a contribution to society, what do childfree people offer society? Do the childfree experience a dichotomy between childfree people and parents?    

The article draws on interviews with 30 childfree women and six childfree men. It discusses three issues: the labour market, the Swedish redistributive tax system and how childfree argue about their contribution to society.    

Childfree women and men accept that parents have problems reconciling work with parenthood, but sometimes get irritated that their time is less valued than parents’. They argue in favour of a “childfriendly” society, but are more hesitant about a “parent friendly” labour market. Likewise, the interviewed Swedish child-free men and women accept the tax system whereby they support children and their families.    

The interviewees reject the idea that having biological children is the only way to be useful to society and give other examples such as voluntary work, helping out other children and paying taxes. Some of them have also noticed how the pronatalistic discourse, often on the Internet, is underpinned by racist arguments.    

Compared to the USA, there are very few Swedish childfree communities on the Internet. The harsher arguments of the pros and cons of parenthood are instead written as comments on Internet articles. A more open discussion between parents and childfree women and men might open up for more political standpoints concerning childfreeness.

The project GRANteD (Grant Allocation Disparities from a Gender Perspective) started in January 2019, funded within the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme, to analyse the occurrence and causes of gender bias in research funding in Europe. Six project partners in five countries investigate from different perspectives and with a multi-method approach factors that may cause gender imbalances before, during and after grant submissions. The project adopts a broad, process-oriented perspective when investigating gender bias in grant allocation, paying particular attention to several different key organisational processes within Research Funding Organisations (RFOs), which structure and systematize grant allocation, such as decision-making processes, review processes, and selection processes.

The GRANteD project includes five empirical, multi-level and multi-method, case studies in which gender bias and gender equality policies are studied in-depth, to produce a multi-faceted understanding of complex issues regarding gender disparities in higher education and science, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative approaches to data collection. The case study research design allowed for inclusion of five public RFOs in the European Research Area, situated in: Austria, Ireland, Poland, Slovak Republic, and Sweden, respectively. The countries and the core RFOs were selected to achieve not only a geographical spread but also a variety of research funding landscapes. In each of the five core RFOs,one funding instrument, targeting mainly early career researchers, was selected for a more detailed analysis of gender bias in the funding cycle.

This GRANteD report constitutes a synthesis on contextual factors, gender equality policy analysis and gender bias risk analysis. It explores, first, national funding regimes and national gender equalityregimes as broader macro contexts of the five core RFOs. This contextual analysis includes how gender equality is or is not foregrounded in the research policies and legislation, as well as gender relations in the research sector. Second, gender equality policies and relevant regulations of the RFOs have been mapped and analysed through timelines, framings, topics addressed, and measures. A grid for assessing gender bias risk in RFOs is introduced in the report as an innovative tool to map potential gender bias risk areas in RFOs, focusing on seven key areas: Strategy; Structure; Language and Communication; Evaluation; Transparency; Accountability; and Monitoring. Third, the five selected funding instruments included in the study are here analysed, adopting a similar framework for identifying potential genderbias risks.

Research funding organisations (RFOs) are key R&D stakeholders in knowledge production and in development of research careers. How do these organisations address gender and other inequalities in their policies and practices? To what extent do they act as change agents towards equality and diversity with an impact on the whole sector? During recent decades, many national research funding organisations have increasingly become engaged in policies promoting gender equality, diversity, and inclusion Some RFOs are also collaborating increasingly in this area, both nationally and regionally, establishing collaborative networks. An important driver here has been the European Research Area (ERA), in which gender equality is one of priorities. However, the developments in this respect across Europe are complex and uneven, with advanced and ambitious policies established in some national contexts, on the one hand, and very limited and restricted engagements in some others, on the other hand.

We compare the developments in national RFOs in five European national contexts, which vary in their research intensity and gender regimes: Austria, Ireland, Poland, Slovak Republic, and Sweden. We highlight advances and challenges in engagement of national RFOs with gender equality, diversity and inclusion, analyse the contextual factors driving development, and ask to what extent do the RFOs integrate intersectional approaches in their policies. The empirical material draws on policy document analysis and qualitative interview and observation research in GRANTeD (Grant Allocation Disparities from a Gender Perspective), a research project funded (2019-2023) by the EU Horizon2020 framework

Gender Mainstreaming in Swedish Higher Education: the political directive reflected in institutional plans. The Swedish government’s latest reform of gender inequality in higher education set out to strengthen gender mainstreaming. Following this reform, the Swedish higher education institutions established gender mainstreaming plans for 2017-2019. In this article, we analyse and discuss the content of these plans, focusing on how they describe the organisation of gender mainstreaming, the understanding of gender inequality as a problem, and the planned activities to achieve gender mainstreaming. Drawing on interpretative frame theory, we identify challenges with the aims and scopes of these plans and the definitions they employ, e.g. in attempts to merge gender mainstreaming with the already on-going equal opportunity work based on the Swedish Discrimination Act. We conclude that many institutions have adopted an approach to gender mainstreaming that has the potential for transformation through long-term and sustainable cultural and structural change. To what extent the plans will be fully implemented, however, remains to be investigated, and depends on the organisation of work, commitment of leaders, and legitimacy of practitioners.

Föreliggande artikel belyser olika aspekter av lokal styrning inom offentliga verksamheter där övergripande mål definieras genom politisk resultat- och målstyrning. Mer specifikt handlar det om hur Sveriges lärosäten styrs för att uppfylla det mål som gavs till dem i regeringens regleringsbrev 2016; att jämställdhetsintegrera sina verksamheter. Artikeln analyserar och diskuterar de styrtekniker som lärosätena använt sig av för att uppfylla målet. Analysen är sålunda en fallstudie av jämställdhetsarbete inom akademin. Resultaten kan dock bidra med kunskaper av en mer generell karaktär gällande styrning i offentlig verksamhet. De är dessutom av direkt relevans för totalt över 90 offentliga verksamheter som ska förverkliga det politiska uppdraget om jämställdhetsintegrering.

This article explores a national women-only leadership development program in Swedish higher education, the so-called IDAS program (an acronym for Identity, Development, Advancement, Support). IDAS encouraged and supported women academics to pursue leadership/administrative careers in higher education and was a unique intervention, aiming to increase the number of women Rectors. By drawing on interviews with some of the women who participated in the IDAS program and subsequently became Rectors, the article provides a valuable case study over best practices to increase women senior leaders in higher education. Notwithstanding the success of the leadership program, the article also deals with resistance and criticism linked to equal opportunity initiatives such as this. The article analyzes the criticism voiced by the women interviewed and suggests that it can be understood in relation to different conceptions of gender and gender (in)equality.

This article applies a media frame analysis in order to highlight representations of voluntary childlessness in Swedish newspapers. The analysis identifies how childfree couples are framed as carefree, fulfilled and content. Childfree women on the other hand are framed as struggling with problems, stereotypes and doubts. Childfree men are absent and implicitly framed as unconcerned and unaffected. Even in the only newspaper article that draws attention to men and voluntary childlessness the voice of the childfree man is absent. Instead of a childfree man a father of six is interviewed and presented as an exception. To explain these different frames this article argues that gender stereotypes, maternalism, pronatalism and heteronormativity influence who is constructed as newsworthy when news media report on voluntary childlessness. While the feminine identity and women's social role is conflated with motherhood, the link between fatherhood and masculinity is weaker. Because men's parenthood roles are indistinct so are men's roles as non-parents. As a result a father to a daughter in a previous relationship can be represented as part of a carefree and childfree couple. Consequently, childfree women are more newsworthy than childfree men, and a father of six is more newsworthy than a non-father.

Sweden has the highest percentage of female university Vice Chancellors in Europe. Some of the factors that have promoted women’s representation in senior management in Swedish academia are: political pressure in the form of goals and policies, quantitative target agreements concerning women’s representation, top level commitment to gender equality goals, and a network encouraging and supporting aspiring women managers. However, although women appear to break the glass ceiling, this paper sets out to investigate whether women are genuinely empowered in Swedish academia. Drawing on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 senior managers in Swedish higher education, the paper reveals some of the challenges facing manager-academics: increasing workload, role conflict and decreasing status and prestige. Situating women’s increase in higher education management in a setting permeated by these challenges stimulates an analysis using theories about feminization of occupations and the metaphor ‘glass cliff’. Feminization refers to how women’s increase in an occupation often occurs simultaneously as it is transformed into a less prestigious work, with limited opportunities for advancement and weakened job security. The related concept ‘glass cliff’ describes a phenomenon when women are more likely to be appointed to precarious leadership roles in situations of turbulence and problematic organizational circumstances. The paper argues that women have been allowed to enter into management positions in higher education at the same time as these positions decline in status, merit and prestige and become more time-consuming and harder to combine with a successful scholarly career. Women are thus placed on an academic glass cliff.

Childfree: a stigmatized position

International research has addressed the subject but in Sweden voluntary childlessness has until now been overlooked. This article draws on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 21 Swedish childfree women. The interviews focused their decision not to have children and attitudes they faced due to their rejection of motherhood. They all had encountered pressure to conform to a pronatalistic norm, proclaiming parenthood to be self-evident in an adult normal life. The results highlight different strategies used by the women to avoid instigating the dislike of those around them. The article argues that understanding childfree as a stigmatized position helps providing new insights to what conditions the social relations between the childfree and ‘the normals’, i.e. persons who advocate having children. Further, viewing the childfree as a stigmatized group has theoretical implications that contribute to developing Goffman’s classical theory of social stigma.

A decade ago, women’s position in Swedish Higher Education management and leadership was described using the glass cliff concept. Women had increased dramatically in positions as Vice Chancellor due to political goals and policies regarding gender equality and quantitative target agreements concerning women’s representation in academia. Interviews with the women themselves however highlighted that the feminization of academic leadership positions also should be understood against the backdrop of a restructuring of higher education and reforms in line with new public management, increased financial pressure and administrative burden. A shift in leadership ideals has thus followed the logic of the glass cliff phenomenon: explaining that women increasingly had been appointed to precarious leadership roles with declining status, merit, and prestige. The heroic leadership ideal had been replaced by a serving leadership ideal, reflecting women’s greater responsibilities for the so-called academic housekeeping, i.e., the service work in academia undertaken in addition to teaching and researching. This presentation elaborates on the development of these leadership ideals in Swedish higher education and explores the development during the last couple of years: has the trend towards feminization of academic leadership positions continued and increased during and after the Covid-19 crisis, which put extraordinarily pressure on leadership positions?

Purpose: The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to explore if and how management ideals are gendered within the context of Swedish higher education management and second, to investigate if and how the gendered character of these ideals has been challenged by new managerialism.

Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 women in senior academic management positions (Vice Chancellors, Pro Vice Chancellors, Deans and Pro deans) in ten Swedish higher education institutions. Discourse analysis is used to explore the constructions of the management ideal in the interviews.

Findings: The paper identifes how the interviewed women managers constructed two different management ideals: one old-fashioned and traditional masculine ideal that was superseded by a feminine ideal that they identifed themselves with. The masculine ideal was presented as being replaced by the feminine ideal due to the restructuring of higher education and the reforms in line with new managerialism. However, the feminine ideal was also associated with a number of professional challenges.

Originality/value: The research study is limited to management in the higher education sector, but the results have general implications as it adds richness to our understanding of the gendered effects of new managerialism. However, the paper builds on a small qualitative study with women only interviews. The paper is therefore to be considered as explorative. More research is needed, especially including men.

Freedom is an often mentioned motive for remaining childfree. However, there is a lack of systematicapproaches attempting to disentangle the situated meaning of freedom in voluntary childlesswomen's lives. This article draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 21 Swedishchildfree women in order to further research how they understand and define freedom. Theanalysis identifies two different discourses of freedom relevant for the construction of thechildfree position. The first discourse includes positive experiences of freedom aspects thatthe childfree women enjoyed in their everyday lives. This discourse also defines freedom aspart of a deep-rooted identity that also involves other life choices, besides rejecting mother-hood. The second discourse comprises negativeopinions about children as risk, motherhoodas time-consuming and parents as“trapped”. The article contextualizes these discourseswithin the contemporary Swedish welfare society.

This chapter explores an aspect of voluntary childlessness that has been neglected in previous research; how voluntarily childless (i.e. childfree) women engage in partnership formation processes and how they perceive that these processes become influenced by their voluntarily childless status. Drawing on interviews with 21 voluntarily childless, heterosexual, Swedish women, this chapter highlights how their childfree decision(s) impacted their partnering behaviour, their chances to form an intimate relationship and their preferences concerning partners and partnerships. The results show some of the challenges these women faced as they engaged in partnership formation processes concerning; for example, constraints in partner availability and potentially conflicting preferences regards autonomy, reproduction and intimacy. In addition, partnership formation was complicated due to a lack of communication, misunderstandings and disbelief in their childfree choices. The analysis illustrates that it was of utmost importance to these women that their intimacy goals were respected and protected during these processes but that some of them were also willing to negotiate their partner ideal. Nevertheless, this chapter ends with a discussion of relationship dissolution due to ambivalence concerning childfree choices and intimacy goals both on behalf of the childfree woman and her partner.

Applying a critical gendered lens, this article examines academic leadership ideals. It draws on a content analysis of job advertisements for Vice-Chancellors at Swedish higher education institutions from 1990 until 2018. The aim of the article is to investigate to what extent masculine or feminine wordings have been used to describe the ideal Vice-Chancellor in these documents. The analysis reveals that a shift in the leadership ideal has taken place during the time period investigated. Before this shift, during the 1990s, the ideal Vice-Chancellor was described as competitive, bold, strong, tough, decisive, driven, and assertive. These wordings are still included in the job advertisements from the 2000s and the 2010s. However, a more communicative and collaborative leadership ideal also emerges during these decades. There is thus a significant shift in how the leadership ideal is described. This shift is analyzed from a gendered perspective, suggesting that the traditional masculine-biased leadership ideal has decreased in influence with the feminine, transformational leadership ideal acting as a counterweight. The article argues that the shift in leadership ideals, as constructed in the job advertisements, mirrors the increase of women Vice-Chancellors appointed in the Swedish higher education sector.

This article highlights the multifaceted character of the Swedish higher education sector and investigates senior academic management positions from a gender perspective using theories about an academic prestige economy and academic capitalism. The focus is on an aspect often overseen in research on Swedish academia: the distinction between universities and university colleges. The analysis draws on interviews with 22 women in senior management positions in Swedish higher education and a quantitative mapping of the Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor positions in universities and university colleges between 1990 and 2015. The results illustrate that the academic prestige economy is interwoven with both gender and academic capitalism and produce different working conditions and requirements for senior managers at universities and university colleges.

This thesis deals with work environments defined as post-bureaucratic, and which are characterised by individualisation and a decrease in the employer's formal control. The study shows how the employees in such work contexts are both empowered and disciplined. The main questions concern to what extent power shifts in relations between the employer and the employees and between female and male employees are visible and how such potential power shifts manifest themselves.

The primary analysis of this power shift focuses on post-bureaucratic work ideals. Work ideals prescribe the skills, competence, manner and qualities of the ideal worker. While bureaucratic work ideals have emphasised employees' rule-following and role adaptation, reflecting the employer's supervision and control over employees, the post-bureaucratic work ideal has been suggested to a shift in power and control that challenges the bureaucratic relationship between power and position.

The study uses a narrative analysis to highlight post-bureaucratic work ideals through examining in depth how Swedish IT consultants constitute, and position themselves in relation to, the ideal IT consultant. Although the consultants present themselves as powerful and autonomous vis-à-vis their managers, they also appear highly controlled by the system of consulting, by customer relations and by a work environment restricted by economic, individualised rationality. They also portray themselves as powerless in relation to threats of being made unemployed.

Notwithstanding the supposed feminisation of a post-bureaucratic work ideal characterised by social competence, this study also shows that the work ideal that is rewarded in post-bureaucracy is not a feminine ideal. Although alleged to be gender-neutral, it is concluded that the idealised character of IT consulting is a gendered construction that gives precedence to hegemonic masculinity, and subordinates traditional feminine qualities, thereby reproducing gendred power relations.

The analysis in this article draws on interviews with managers and employees in the Swedish IT consultant sector, a sector characterized by widespread redundancies in the first three years of the 21st century. The article suggests that the interviewees' distinction between and assessment of workers of value and workers without value to justify and explain these lay-offs, are permeated by stereotyped images of gendered qualities and reflect a gendered work ideal. As the interviewees argued, not everybody had the necessary and valued competence of an ideal consultant and those who failed to fulfil the requirements of an ideal consultant were subsequently laid off. Since the behaviour, qualities, technical skills and knowledge considered necessary for the effective and competent performance of an ideal IT consultant are associated with hegemonic masculinity, male qualities and men's experiences, these arguments justify the exclusion of women from this occupation.

The analysis in this article draws on interviews with managers and employees in the Swedish IT consultant sector, a sector characterized by widespread redundancies in the first three years of the 21^st century. The article suggests that the interviewees' distinction between and assessment of workers of value and workers without value to justify and explain these lay-offs, are permeated by stereotyped images of gendered qualities and reflect a gendered work ideal. As the interviewees argued, not everybody had the necessary and valued competence of an ideal consultant and those who failed to fulfil the requirements of an ideal consultant were subsequently laid off. Since the behaviour, qualities, technical skills and knowledge considered necessary for the effective and competent performance of an ideal IT consultant are associated with hegemonic masculinity, male qualities and men's experiences, these arguments justify the exclusion of women from this occupation.

Sweden is among the countries with the highest per cent of women university Vice Chancellors in Europe. In She Figures 2012 the average proportion of female Vice Chancellors in the 27 European Union countries is estimated to be 10 per cent. In Sweden the number is much higher: 43 per cent. Swedish higher education management has witnessed a demographic feminization during the last 20 years. Which factors can explain that women have been so successful in gaining access to these senior management positions in Swedish academia? This paper discusses the demographic feminization, drawing on qualitative interviews with women in senior academic positions in Swedish higher education. The paper suggests that women’s position in higher education management can be analysed using the concept ‘‘glass cliff’’. This metaphor describes a phenomenon when women are more likely to be appointed to precarious leadership roles in situations of turbulence andproblematic organizational circumstances. The findings illustrate that women have been allowed to enter into senior academic management at the same time as these positions decline in status, merit and prestige and become more time-consuming and harder to combine with a successful scholarly career.

This article explores management ideals in transnational business relations by drawing on interviews with 18 Swedish managers involved in managing IT offshoring from Sweden to India. Drawing on a critical discourse framework the analysis highlights how the managers interviewed discursively constructed the meaning of ideal management and tried to merge their familiar Swedish management style with the transnational business context, using different discursive practices. The Swedish management ideal was understood as highly context sensitive and the subject position constructed within the discourse was not unproblematic to assume outside of the Swedish business context. Instead, according to the managers interviewed, their management practices were inefficient in the transnational business context in which they were now operating. The article advances the discussion of contemporary management by examining how managers negotiate management ideals when faced with the challenges of effective management of offshore IT sourcing relationships. The managers argued for flexible management strategies that merged the Swedish management style together with the Indian business setting. Even if this entailed abandoning key aspects of the Swedish management ideal it was understood as necessary for securing and maximizing business efficiency.

Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, this article highlights the increasing proportion of women in senior academic management positions in Swedish higher education between 1990 and 2010. The article uncovers some of the factors that account for women's successful entrance into these positions. According to 22 interviewed female senior academic managers, the implementation of a gender mix policy was vital in explaining the decreasing male-domination. However, the women also expressed some concerns about the consequences of how the gender mix policy was applied. The article takes these concerns as a point of departure for a critical evaluation of how successful the policy is in promoting gender equality on a structural level.

Studies show that in order to become a successful, respected and trusted, technical expert it is essential to display technical self-confidence, competitiveness and ambition. However, women in technical work settings often find it difficult to adjust to this work ideal. Rather than promoting themselves they choose to understate their technical competence. This article argues that the display of low technical self-confidence is a strategy used by women in order to become accepted in a work setting permeated by a technical and masculine work ideal. Women who try to conform to the competitive technical work ideal meet with disapproval since they fail to perform in accordance with gender-appropriate behaviour. Women in technical work settings are thus confronted with a double-bind dilemma that they need to develop strategies to cope with. By displaying lack of technical self-confidence they do not challenge the male supremacy and are hence accepted by their colleagues.

This paper explores crisis management discourses in academia through a gender lens. It investigates, through these discourses, which academic management ideals dominate in HEI during and after immediate, emerging, and sustained crises (cf. Parsons, 1996). It addresses the research questions: Which crisis management ideals are performed and expressed by vice-chancellors/university presidents?; Which crisis management ideals are preferred, favoured, and promoted by HEIs?; To what extent are these ideals permeated by gendered management ideals?

The paper builds on a theoretical framework that combines critical masculinities studies and critical feminist theory on gender, management, and leadership, particularly focusing on crises (e.g., Ericson & Mellström, 2016). These theories have demonstrated that crisis management is male-coded, emphasising risk taking, risk management and mastering fear as characteristics closely connected to masculinity and the performativity of masculine heroism (Whitehead, 2002). Other studies, however, suggest that interpersonally oriented leadership traits emphasising communication, and (stereo)typically associated with women, are particularly useful and relevant for crisis management (Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2010; Gartzia et al., 2012; Ryan et al., 2011).

The analysis draws especially on Branicki’s (2020) definition of rationalist approaches to crisis management characterised by authoritarian leadership, determination, masculine logic, and militaristic language, privileging of the quantifiable, and a conceptualisation of crises as rational and linear processes. She contrasts this with an alternative feminist conceptualising of crisis management based on an ethics of care, with normative assumptions about interpersonal relationships, reciprocal care, situated knowledge, and a focus on marginalised issues and positions, improving lives, and social transformation, which also echo the servant leadership philosophy (Peterson, 2018).

The paper empirically draws on a study of academic crisis management discourses and narratives expressed in interviews with vice-chancellors/university presidents in blogs and in written documents produced by the HEIs, published on the websites of HEIs and in media. The discourses analysed were produced during and after immediate, emerging, and sustained crises (Parsons, 1996), with the analysis specifically focusing on when a vice-chancellor/university president steps down and a new is appointed: To what extent are the crisis management narratives of the outgoing and incoming vice-chancellors characterised by similarities/differences? The study followed frame analysis, and reveals not only expectations on, and performances of, ideal crisis management during and after these crises. The analysis also distinguishes between framings of crises, and if different crisis management ideals are associated with different internal and external crises.

The paper concludes by discussing to what extent crises management ideals have the potential to challenge and transform gendered structures and power relations in academia and/or to what degree ideal academic crisis management can produce academic glass cliffs for women, i.e., situations where women are being appointed to precarious, challenging, and risky leadership roles during turbulent times (Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2010; Gartzia et al., 2012; Peterson, 2018; Ryan et al., 2011).

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to highlight how women managers in Swedish higher education (HE) both support and resist policies about equal representation, and to discuss which factors influenced if, and how, these managers took on the role as change agents for gender equality.

Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 women in senior academic management positions (vice-chancellors, pro vice-chancellors, deans and pro deans) in ten Swedish HE institutions.

Findings: The paper highlights how these women situated themselves in an academic context where gender relations were changing. They supported equal representation policies in their everyday managerial practice and also by accepting management positions that they were nominated and elected to on the basis of such policies. However, they also resisted these policies when they experienced a need to “protect” women from being exploited “in the name of gender equality”.

Research limitations/implications: The paper addresses the call for research on the role of women managers in promoting, or preventing, change towards more gender balanced organizations. The paper builds on a small qualitative study with women only interviews. The study is therefore to be considered as explorative. Practical implications – The paper makes a contribution to the research literature in the area of gender and change in academic organizations. The findings highlight how policies have different onsequences in different settings and that people use their own (different) experiences when interpreting the effects of these policies. The findings thus show the varying impacts equal representation policies can have on women.

Originality/value: The discussion in the paper is situated in a unique empirical context characterized by demographic feminization and organizational restructuring. Most international literature on women in HE and in HE management is based on US or UK contexts. Swedish HE therefore provides an interesting setting. The analysis also addresses the call for more research that takes into account the multifaceted character of HE and that discusses disciplinary differences.

This chapter explores institutionalised resistance to gender equality initiatives reported by 15 gender equality change agents (GECAs) in Swedish and Portuguese Higher Education (HE). Drawing on qualitative interviews with the GECAs, the study highlights similarities within the two national HE contexts, but also contextual nuances and variations. Feminist institutionalism is used as a theoretical framework which facilitates an investigation of how resistance appears embedded in the structures and processes of HE. The analysis develops the conceptual categorisation of institutionalised resistance embedded in three separate types of institutional structures and processes: (1) legitimation, (2) decision making and (3) resource allocation. The GECAs in both contexts identified the decoupling mechanisms behind these structures and processes: formal institutional rules and policies characterised by gender equality, equal opportunity and meritocracy were compromised by informal practices and routines which preserved status quo. The “mirage of equality” was therefore a reoccurring theme in both contexts.

The GenderTime project

GenderTime was an action, support and intervention programme funded by the European Commission between January 2013 and December 2016. The purpose of GenderTime was to promote organizational structural change and increase the participation and career advancement of women researchers in seven research and higher education institutions in seven European countries.

The method for generating change that was adopted in the GenderTime project utilized Gender Equality Plans (GEPs), which were tailor-made to fit each of the seven participating institutions. The implementation of the GEPs was managed and organized by seven national GenderTime teams, whose members constituted the GenderTime consortium.

The seven GEPs together organized almost 200 actions and change interventions that were implemented during four years. The actions targeted organizational and managerial processes and procedures and aimed at for example creating gender sensitive recruitment, retention and promotion policies; supporting and improving work-life balance; establishing a more inclusive work culture, and; increasing gender awareness throughout the organizations.

The implementation of the GEPs in the participating institutions was carefully monitored throughout the project. The name GenderTime indicates the prominent place monitoring had in the project as the acronym TIME stands for: Transferring, Implementing, Monitoring Equality.

This article draws on interviews with Swedish voluntarily childless women and men in order to discuss their understandings of living in a so-called “child-friendly” welfare society where social policies subsidize families with children. Previous research from Anglo-Saxon countries implies that the social, political and economical interests of the voluntarily childless are in conflict with the interests of parents and that state subsidies and policies in support of parents could be considered as discrimination of childless people. However, in contrast to this previous research, the interviewees did not object to the redistributive tax system that benefits parents or to the political ambition to build a “child-friendly” labour market where it is possible to reconcile work with parenthood. Instead they defended themselves against accusations for being “free-riders” who did not contribute to society by referring to the responsibility they took by paying high taxes. Notwithstanding, the informants criticized how some parents misused their benefits and cashed in on them, making the voluntarily childless feel exploited. The article also suggests that state subsidies can eliminate some motives for voluntary childlessness but not all of them. The results add nuances to previous research as they highlight the importance of further investigating the relations between parents and non-parents in a social and political context.

This article reports on the results from the two first studies on voluntary childlessness in Sweden and draws on interviews with 30 childfree women and 6 men. The article explores how they managed to create a legitimate childfree position in a soci-ety permeated by pronatalistic norms proclaiming parenthood to be self-evident in an adult normal life. Failure to conform to these norms results in being negatively stereotyped as selfish, abnormal and a childhater. Women who do not wish to become a mother also risk being called into question as "real" women since the feminine identity and women's social roles are conflated with ideas about maternalism.

Instead of explaining their childlessness with external factors most of the interviewees stressed the fact that they never had the desire to have a child. Insisting on that they always had known they did not want children, they did not even experience they had made a choice not to have a child. in this way they positioned themselves as "naturally childfree".

To some extent the childfree women and men agreed with pronatal-istic norms that wanting a child is the natural order of things and that a woman who mothers also has achieved her biological destiny. Although acknowledging an irresistible drive towards reproduction in most people, our informants expressed the total lack of this instinct in their own bodies. However, they also left the door open to the possibility that this biological urge could suddenly appear – therefore rejecting sterilization as being a too drastic contracep-tive choice. Important for the naturally childfree position is thus the simultaneous acceptance of, and detachment from, the biological reproductive urge.

This article reports from the first studies on voluntary childlessness in Sweden and addresses a so far neglected issue – the embodied experiences of childfree women. These childfree women reject and resist pronatalist understandings that conflate being a woman with being a mother. However, instead of explaining their childlessness by external factors, mentioned in previous research, the interviewed women created a positive feminine identity separated from motherhood with reference to their ‘silent bodies’, i.e. bodies without a biological urge to reproduce. Reducing voluntary childlessness to a mere result of biological determinism, the article argues, establishes a legitimate, natural position, less provocative and stigmatized in a pronatalist society. Nevertheless, paradoxically, drawing on biological determinism both challenges and reinstates pronatalism as it builds on the simultaneous acceptance of, and detachment from, the biological reproductive urge. The study hence highlights how persistent the social and cultural link between motherhood and womanhood is, but also how this relationship can be challenged.

This article explores voluntarily childless women’s experiences and understandings of human-animal interactions and their attitudes towards companion animals. It draws on interviews with 15 Swedish women who expressed a lack of “maternal” feelings and therefore had remained voluntarily childless, or childfree (used here as two interchangeable concepts). nstead, the women described how they perceived the attachment bonds to companion nimals that they had developed as similar to, or even superior to, the attachments bonds between arents and their children. The article thus introduces the expressions “peternal”, and peternal feelings”, to denote these women’s attachment bonds to companion animals (primarily cats and dogs). The results, however, also illustrate that few of the women actually took on the role as “pet parent”. Although they longed to develop attachment bonds with companion animals they were conflicted and experienced ambivalence, leading to decisions to develop avoidance strategies, resembling those involved in the childfree decision. Hence, many of them described themselves as both childfree and “petfree”.

Previous studies have highlighted how the academic peer review system has been marked by gender bias and nepotism. Panel meetings arranged by research funding organisations (RFOs), where reviewers must explain and account for their assessment and scoring of grant applications, can potentially mitigate and disrupt patterns of inequality. They can however also constitute arenas where biases are reproduced. This article explores, through a gender lens, the shift from face-to-face to digital peer review meetings in a Swedish RFO, focusing on the implications for an unbiased and fair grant allocation process. Drawing on twenty-two interviews with panellists and staff in the RFO, the analysis identifies both benefits and challenges of this shift, regarding use of resources, meeting dynamics, micropolitics, social glue, and possibilities for group reflections. RFOs deliberating digitalisation of their peer review processes need to consider these implications to develop policies promoting unbiased and fair grant allocation processes and procedures.

This chapter reports on a case study of a Swedish University, appointed the most gender equal university in Sweden. With the highest percentage of women professors in Swedish academia (35%) and a gender balance in senior academic management positions, it has received recognition for its achievements when it comes to quantitative gender equality. Drawing on interviews with key informants and official documents, the chapter explores how this university managed to establish and maintain a gendered agenda. The analysis uses a theoretical framework about gendered organizations and gender equality practices to explore how gender was undone in relation to structure, culture, interaction and identity.

This article investigates how Swedish higher education institutions (HEIs) conceptualized and organized the 2016 Swedish government directive to gender mainstream their operations. The directive provided the general guidelines for the programme Gender Mainstreaming in Academia (GMA), which was to be implemented by HEIs between 2017 and 2019. This analysis draws on interviews with people at 13 HEIs responsible for, or in other ways participating in, the development of tailor-made gender mainstreaming plans (GMPs), which served as the starting point for the GMA programme. Using organizational translation theory, the article explores how the informants translated gender mainstreaming, as a broad policy strategy, into more specific conceptual and practical terms to fit their local contexts. The analysis focuses on how these gender mainstreaming translation processes were organized and who was invited to participate in the process. The results highlight how the organization of the translation process, the appointment of translators and the local translation of the GMA programme were guided by different principles, most often resulting in an integrationist rather than transformative translation of gender mainstreaming. The limitations and potentials of different translations of gender mainstreaming in relation to achieving organizational change and ultimately a more gender-equal organization are discussed.

Gender inequality is a serious and complex challenge that needs to be addressed by academic managers and leaders, who should ensure that they facilitate increased gender equality with regards to both formal and informal institutional practices. This chapter argues for the importance of gender aware and gender competent academic managers and leaders who are willing to take on the role as change agent for gender equality and exercise gender equality change management and leadership. Explored here are the conditions for such successful change agency for gender equality. The chapter adds to previous research in this area by emphasizing the distinction between formal and informal change strategies, tasks and responsibilities. These distinctions are illustrated with examples from a study on gender mainstreaming in Swedish Higher Education where academic managers were interviewed about their implementation strategies.

In this chapter, Joan Acker’s concept of gendered work ideals is used to understand the cultural clashes in transnational collaboration between Swedish and Indian firms. Interviews in two firms show that Indian employees collaborating with Sweden meet with conflicting ideals which they find difficult to realize, because of the differences between the prevalent organizational cultures in the different national contexts, India being more Tayloristic and Sweden being more entrepreneurial. The gendered work ideals also differ. The Indian ideal worker is extremely difficult for women to realize, due to societal expectations, which effectively prevents them from fulfilling the organizational expectations. Acker’s description of the gendered work ideal proves to be insufficient in this cultural context, where the differences between the societal gender roles of women and men are built in the organizational culture and women’s societal role as mothers overrides their role as employees in ways not covered in Acker’s presumptions.