Gender equality is a political issue that has gained a lot of support in the last decades. Researchers have however pointed out that gender equality has a wide variety of understandings.

SKL (Sveriges kommuner och landsting) is an organization that looks after the interests of local authorities and county councils in Sweden. SKL has by the government been granted 145 million Swedish crowns to support gender mainstreaming at a local level. During a period of three years, 2008-2010, funding has been given to 89 projects for this purpose.

The aim of this study is to examine what meanings are given to the term “gender equality” in these projects. Is there a dominant understanding of the term? What can be said about the meanings that are identified? The method used is Carol Bacchis What´s the problem approach. The main question asked to the material is “what is the problem with gender (in)equality represented to be?”

The analysis shows that the understandings of gender equality are identified in five general themes. Four of them are connected to a liberal philosophy, thus forming a dominant liberal discourse on gender equality. The remaining one has quite the opposite ideas underpinning it: one that understands gender inequality as a consequence of societal structures, norms and an asymmetrical distribution of wealth and power.

To conclude I elaborate on what the liberal discursive dominance means for the question of gender equality. The risk with strategies built upon liberal ideas is that it eliminates conflicts in politics – thus depoliticizing gender equality.