Equality as a means

Gävle municipality has about 7200 employees. The municipality is organized in nine committees and nine administration service departments. The largest administrations are care of elderly, kindergarten for children and education. Kajsa Svaleryd is a fulltime employee who works as a strategist for gender equality in the management administration office. Her role is to make a strategy for increasing the knowledge of gender equality, secure that subject integrates in planning, decisions and in steering documents. Her work mainly focuses on educating and inspiring leaders to review their organisations regarding gender equality. The strategist has also a role in taking initiatives to projects for improving awareness in gender equality issues and how that effects the everyday work in e.g. schools, social services and social planning. The goal is that all citizens can be sure that the service they are receiving is available, of excellent quality and regardless their sex.

Two of the most recent projects developed in the municipality are Equality treatment plan in schools and kindergarten and Diversity and recruitment.

Equality treatment plan

Project aims to increase the knowledge of gender equality in Gävle's schools and kindergartens. The overall goal was to secure gender equality in everyday encounters with the children and students. The project combined knowledge- rising lectures and concrete individual coaching for each school/kindergarten. The target group was the management level. In giving lectures on the subject to increase the knowledge while at the same time giving individual support to each school/kindergarten in adding the gender equality perspective in their everyday work, we managed to raise awareness of the issue and getting the process going. The project is an example of how to work preventatively with gender equality to benefit the city and its citizens.

Diversity and recruitment

A web-based guide, aimed at improving the recruiting process with focus on gender equality and non-discrimination was constructed. This guide is then implemented and disseminated through the organization. The project includes lectures to raise awareness among its employees on gender equality and anti-discrimination.The guide is to be used throughout the organization and is an example of how to include the gender equality perspective in one specific process.

These projects aim at the same goal, to increase awareness of our own behavior in the encounter with co- workers, clients and citizens. It is necessary to know how much our behavior reflects our sometimes very normative values and how we, in those cases, still can make sure we are doing a quality based job where the equality- and human rights perspective is secured. This, we need to do to make sure gender equality does not just remain a goal, but a mean to get to the goal in our everyday work with and for the citizens of Gävle.