Gender mainstreaming in the Swedish Contingency Agency's coordination conferences

MSB like other governmental agencies has an obligation to gender mainstream all its activities. This also applies to coordination and collaboration with other agencies and actors. To get a comprehensive understanding of how and to what extent the gender perspective is integrated in the context of the national coordination conferences, this study has analyzed a sample of conferences held between 2014 and 2016. It has resulted in a host of recommendations. The analysis shows that the MSB has a good framework for gender mainstreaming. The agency has an adequate policy base and valid plan for gender mainstreaming. There are already a number of ongoing processes. The actors involved in the coordination conferences are supportive of integrating a gender perspective and are mainstreaming gender in their own organizations. MSB's staff believes that gender mainstreaming is important for the goal to provide services on equal terms to the entire population. However, MSB has three main challenges: First, MSB does not have the power to decide who participates in collaborative conferences, i.e. the number of men and women respectively. Secondly, MSB cannot influence how other agencies integrate gender equality or train their staff. Thirdly, there are no concrete methods and tools to integrate gender perspectives in the conferences.