Gender and gender equality in education
The purpose of this page and the resources collected here is to create a basic understanding of one of Örebro University's government missions, gender mainstreaming, and what it means for education. The following information explains basic concepts that relate to sex, gender, gender equality and equal opportunity, and provide resources for developing the form and content of education from different gender- and gender equality perspectives.
Key concepts
Gender equality means that women and men should have the same power to shape society and their own lives.
Equality, on the other hand, is a broader concept. It refers to equal and fair relations between all individuals and groups in society and that all people have equal value and rights in society.
Equal opportunity is the right to coexist in justice and on equal terms regardless of gender, gender identity or gender expression, ethnicity, religion or other beliefs, disability, sexual orientation or age. These are also the seven grounds of discrimination in the Discrimination Act.
Sex is used to describe the bodily sex while gender is used to describe the socially constructed gender that is created and shaped through expectations, norms and cultural interpretations. However, the distinction between sex and gender is not easily made because bodies (sex) must also be understood through cultural expectations and norms. These are interpreted differently in different cultures and eras.
Norm critical pedagogy (“normkritik”) is a concept that describes a way of understanding and critically examining norms in everyday life. It is not about "criticizing" norms; they are important to navigate in the social world. However, norm critical pedagogy aims to make visible expectations and values that are not always so easy for us to detect.
Intersectionality is the "intersection" between our different identities based on, in addition to gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, functionality, age, etc. This means that we do not have one identity at a time but that we orient ourselves between different identities and power structures throughout life.
The strategy that Swedish authorities, and including Swedish higher education institutions, use in their work to achieve the Government's gender equality policy goals is called gender mainstreaming. For Swedish colleges and universities, the goals are to
- counteract gender-based study choices
- develop the form and content of teaching
- promote equal career paths
- promote equal distribution of resources
- develop evaluation and follow-up
In Swedish, gender mainstreaming is called "jämställdhetsintegrering". Directly translated into English, it would thus be called "gender equality mainstreaming". It is therefore important to gain an understanding of what both gender perspectives and gender equality perspectives mean for Swedish higher education institutions.
From a gender equality perspective, one looks at gender and power balances (and imbalaces) in an organization or other contexts such as the educational context. This work is about promoting, for example, broadened recruitment, broadened participation and broadened progression. Unlike "increased" recruitment, participation and progression, it is not just about increasing the number of students in total numbers, but that the number of women and men should be recruited, participate and complete educations as evenly distributed as possible. At Örebro University, we also work for broadened recruitment, broadened participation and broadened progression based on social background, ethnicity, functionality, age, etc.
From a gender perspective, one looks at the content and implementation of education / research. The subject can, but does not have to, be about gender equality. Then the students explore how the course content, e.g. the course literature, considers gender in its entirety or how different issues shed light on the living conditions of women, men and non-binary individuals.
Mainstreaming, (“integrering” in Swedish) or making the work mainstream, means that a gender and gender equality perspective must be an established part of the organization, from planning, decision-making, implementation to follow-up. The Centre for Academic Development is the university's pedagogical operational support for integrating different gender and gender equality perspectives in the form and content of teaching. In the recorded material below, basic concepts such as sex, gender, gender equality, norm critical pedagogy, etc. are discussed and problematized.