Suchergebnisse

Purpose
In Sweden, gender mainstreaming policies have a long political history. As part of the national gender equality strategy of the Swedish forest industry, the ten largest forestry companies committed themselves to gender mainstream their policies. Limiting the impact of policies and the agency of change, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the varied and conflicting meanings and constitution of the concepts, the problem and, in extent, the organisational realities of gender mainstreaming.


Design/methodology/approach
In both, implementation and practice, gender mainstreaming posse challenges on various levels and by analysing these documents as practical texts from the WPR-approach. This paper explores constructions of gender and gender equality and their implications on the practice and the political of gender mainstreaming in a male-dominated primary industry.


Findings
The results show that the organisations themselves were not constituted as the subject of the policy but instead some of the individuals (women). The subject position of women represented in company policy was one of lacking skills and competences and in the need of help. Not only men and the masculine norms but organisational processes and structures were also generally invisible in the material. Power and conflict were mainly absent from the understanding of gender equality. Instead, consenting ideas of gender equality were the focus. Such conceptualisations of gender equality are beneficial for all risk concealing power structures and thereby limit the political space for change.


Originality/value
By highlighting the scale of policy and the significance of organisational contexts, the results indicate how gender and gender equality are constitutive through the governing technologies of neoliberal and market-oriented ideologies in policy – emphasising the further limiting of space for structural change and politicalization within the male-dominated organisations of Swedish forest industry.

This article adds to the understanding of men's discursive resistance in relation to gender-equality interventions at work. Using Swedish men forestry professionals as the empirical base, the result shows how discursive resistance were performative acts, part of the construction of the same gender-equality interventions and organizational contexts that they were perceived to describe. In this case, direct opposition to gender equality provided a limited discursive position and sets of logics available in practice. Instead, the possibilities to renegotiate gender-equality interventions as unjust and unnecessary required, we conclude that the industry's ambition to hire and promote more women was perceived to have led to the use of affirmative action and the disruption of meritocratic principles and that the problems of gender equality were placed in the traditional forestry and among "prejudiced old men," as oppose to the more "modern" and "women friendly" forestry of today.

Events in recent decades have placed climate change at the top of the political agenda. In Sweden,energy-intensive industries are responsible for a large proportion of greenhouse gas emissions and their ability toswitch to renewable energy sources could contribute to the transition to a decarbonised economy. Thisinterdisciplinary study has its starting point in three energy-intensive industries' opportunities to take part in thedevelopment towards increased refining and use of biomass. The study includes the pulp and paper industry, theiron and steel industry and the oil refining industry, each exemplified by a case company. It can be concludedthat there are several technological options in each industry. On the other hand, implementing one option forincreased use of biomass in each case company could demand up to 34% of the estimated increase in Swedishbiomass supply, in 2020. Additionally, in a longer time perspective none of the case companies believes that theamount of biomass in the Swedish industrial energy system have the possibility to increase significantly in the future.

There is an urgent need for radical transformations of unsustainable socio-technical systems, such as food, mobility, and housing. These transformations will not take place without new policies and research. In order to achieve these transitions, learning must be a central feature based on thorough evaluations of the actions taken. Evaluations have been conducted and studied for decades, but traditional evaluation approaches have largely been developed to produce knowledge for incremental changes, not for radical transformations. This article develops a framework for interdisciplinary evaluations targeting transformative changes toward a more sustainable society. The framework combines evaluation theory and practice with transition theory, sociology of science, policy analyses, and environmental psychology. While the primary purpose of the framework is to help design evaluations that would better enhance learning for transitions, it can also be used for systematic meta-evaluations of past evaluations.

Events in recent decades have placed climate change at the top of the political agenda. The European Union has assumed a vanguard role in global climate negotiations, pushing for ambitious international commitments. Furthermore, Sweden is positioning itself as a leader within the EU when it comes to setting the agenda for climate change. In Sweden, energy-intensive industries are responsible for a large proportion of greenhouse gas emissions and their ability to switch to a renewable energy source could contribute significantly to the transition to a decarbonised economy. This study analyses the role of three energy-intensive industries with regard to increased refining and use of biomass and will also take a glimpse into the future in an attempt to gain further insight into what will affect future developments in this area. The study is limited to the pulp and paper industry, the iron and steel industry and the oil refining industry as well as the EU legislation that affects these industries. For each industry the operations of the following case companies, Södra, SSAB and Preem AB, are analysed specifically and for each company one or two selected plants exemplify the outcome of the implementation of different technologies. This interdisciplinary study combines a range of methods taken from engineering and social sciences. The industries studied all have different preconditions for transformations and the technological options available diverge to a large extent. There are many options for the pulp and paper industry compared to the iron and steel industry and the oil refining industry. The most likely technological option for this sector is to utilise internal resources for conversion to energy or material products and export of excess energy. Options for the steel producer SSAB include the substitution of part of the coke in the blast furnace with biomass or refined biomass products such as syngas and biomethane and forming an industrial symbiotic partnership. There are several options for the oil refining industry to substitute fossil feedstocks without the need to modify the existing infrastructure. One option is hydrotreatment of bio-oil into green diesel, which will be implemented at the Preem refinery in Gothenburg. However, green production of transportation fuels and substitution of coke in the blast furnace require large amounts of biomass and since biomass is a limited resource this is likely to act as a barrier to the development of these technologies. Furthermore, it can be concluded that the companies studied could contribute significantly to the development of technologies that are in line with their core capabilities, while the development of technological options that require a change in their core capabilities is more limited. This discovery is further supported by the finding that the EU directives relevant to this report do not push industrial operators beyond efficiency measures along established technological lines. On the one hand, these legislative instruments, which are designed in the spirit of ecological modernisation, encourage the most cost-effective technologies and processes for the abatement of greenhouse gases relevant to each industry. On the other, they do not appear to be sufficient to raise the cost of carbon emissions and this contributes to a situation where incentives to make different biomass-based technologies economic are not present on the market. Over a longer time perspective none of the case companies believes that biomass will have increased significantly in the Swedish energy system by 2050. These case companies claim that biomass is too limited a resource and can only contribute in part to the necessary substitution of fossil fuels.

Wild geese are increasing in agricultural and urban settings across Europe, leading to widespread human – geese interactions. This study examined how the public's acceptance of geese (attitude and acceptance capacity) varied depending on place dimensions, interactions with geese in different settings (place-based experience), and psychological factors, including wildlife value orientations, beliefs about the ecosystem services and disservices geese provide, and emotions. A survey was conducted in two municipalities with large goose populations in Sweden; Kristianstad and Örebro (n = 898). Results revealed a favorable view of the occurrence of geese, although a substantial share believed the number of geese was too high. Place-based experiences of geese were correlated with acceptance (e.g., more experience on beaches was associated with a negative attitude) and the importance of psychological factors for acceptance was confirmed. The study highlights the need to consider the public's experiences of geese for sustainable goose management.