MAG Sweden

Members:

Karin Eriksson, project-leader at W7 – a Women Resource Center in the north of Dalarna. W7 is a good practice in Winnet 8. Karin is also running her own business and therefore represents both an NGO and entrepreneurship.

Nils-Åke Norman, is a politician -  mayor in the town of Älvdalen and is also in the regional structural funds’ partnership.

Hans Lundkvist is a PhD at the regional steel-cluster Triple Steelix. Represents a good practice and the university.

Agneta B Johansson, working at the regional department of Swedish agency for economic and regional growth, one of our Managing Authorities.

Kjell Höglin is a politician, the chairman in the Structural funds’ partnership.

Pirkko Jonsson is the chairwoman at the Regional Women Resource Center in Gävleborg, Winnet Gävleborg.

Carina Löfgren, from Region Gävleborg, one of the five Swedish partners. Represents a number of good practices.

Ann-Christin Gagge, Region Gävleborg, alternates with Carina Löfgren in MAG.

Marita Svensson, gender expert, running gender projects in the cluster Fiber Optic Valley.

Karin Gellin, head of the Social Fund in Gävle.

Kenneth Nilshem, chairman in a Leader-project called Hälsingebygden and a local politician.

Kerstin Bergman, gender expert at the County Board

Christina Haggren, University of Dalarna, works with improving connections between research and entrepreneurship.

First meeting was held in May 2010. Regional coordinators Elisabeth Holm and Lina Torstensson presented the project and the tasks of MAG. They also presented some figures on the gender-equality situation in the region. The discussion held at the meeting ended up with forming goals with the action-plan:

• more gender equal division of the money from the Structural Funds.
• Improved policies in the region
• The cluster-issue: the regions focuses a lot on clusterdeveloping. But most of the money goes to cluster in maledominated sectors. Widen the definitions of innovations? Have more focus on the public area?

In August MAG had the opportunity to listen to a presentation from Håkan Ottosson at SKL, Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, about the Winnet 8-project’s connection with the European level. Britt-Marie Torstensson from Winnet Sweden also told about the background of the project.

In the beginning of October the MAG-members met in their working-groups to prepare for the second MAG-meeting. They got to see the template for the actionplan and a brief introduction for the studyvisit and the benchmarking-model.

The 12^th of October the second MAG-meeting took place.

The members decided to arrange two workshops in connection to the next MAG-meetings, to make the actionplan-creating more efficient.

The first will focus on gaining a common ground in genderknowledge, the second will focus on power-structures.

The group is also going to meet in the smaller working-groups before the next ordinary MAG-meeting, to discuss a few topics that were raised at the meeting:

Why do we have such a segregated labour-market? Generally and regionally.

How can we change it?

Why do so few women have a full-time job in our region? How do we change it?

The division of project-funds – how can we prevent that the gender-equality goals in the policies remain just words on a paper?

How can we measure if the project-funds are gender-equally divided? How can we improve the results?

Next ordinary MAG-meeting will be on 13^th of December, in Falun and in connection with the meeting there will be a workshop on gender-definitions and the connection between gender-equality and regional development, led by Carina Löfgren.

The fourth MAG-meeting will be held 19th January, with a workshop on power-structures held by our national gender-expert Malin Lindberg.