Sweden has a Minister of Gender Equality, as well as a parliamentary Ombudsman for Gender Equality. Each ministry has a Gender Equality Coordinator, who is part of an inter-ministerial working group on gender mainstreaming that meets quarterly. Work with gender equality should be integrated in all policies and programmes, including those in cultural policy.
Women have been in the majority among employees in the Swedish arts and culture sector, at least since 2001. As summed up in a report from the Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis in 2015, gender balance in the cultural sector’s management level changed between studies made in 2001–2004 and 2009–2012. In more recent studies, women were in the majority among employees in leadership positions in the arts and culture sector, with regional music institutions as the only exception among the categories included in the study. In 2015, the Agency also noted that while administrative positions had a majority of women, artistic work showed a predominance of men. The report also mentioned as a hypothesis put forward in a reference group that this gendered division of labour may explain why the proportion of men decreased during the period; the administration increased as a part of the total number of employees, while artistic work is increasingly done by freelancers. Among applicants to the Arts Grants Committee, 57 percent were female before the Covid-19 pandemic, but interestingly only 47 percent among those applying for the special support grants granted during the pandemic (Swedish Arts Grants Committee 2020). Among those receiving grants from the Swedish Arts Council 2019–2021, women were in the majority, both among participating artists, and among arts managers in the projects. Measured in number of individuals, women were also the majority among applicants (Swedish Agency of Cultural Analysis 2023c).
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