Jämställdhet i grundskolan

Abstract

The aim of the study is to explore how the concept of gender equality and the compulsory school’s gender equality mission can be understood in national policy documents. The study is a critical document study that takes critical discourse analysis as a starting point. In the policy documents reviewed, four different discourses on gender equality appear: Gender equality as a non-question – discourse of equal treatment, which turns out as an absence of the concept of gender equality or as an understanding of gender equality as equal treatment or anti-discrimination. Focus on biological sex – discourse of difference, where the focus on biological sex means that differences between girls and boys are explained as natural and essential. Gender equality as a matter of quality, where gender equality is understood as a means to an end rather than a value of its own, and finally Gender as a Swedish virtue, where gender equality is explained as something that the school needs to teach people with a non-Swedish background. The different discourses all relate to a neo-liberal hegemony, in which the understanding of gender equality implies a non-existing space to promote a change of power relations.