| 2. |
- Lindgren, Gerd, 1945-, et al.
(författare)
-
Economic Geography in Regional Planning : Homosocial Stories or Allowing Spaces
- 2012
-
Ingår i: Promoting innovation. - Stockholm : VINNOVA. - 9789186517717 ; , s. 135-155
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The regional programme “Sustainable Värmlandic Growth for the period 2004 – 2007” is a textbook example of the regional development policy that was developed since the early 1990s in Sweden. One can find many similarities with the work being done in this county and the theoretical explanations developed in the "new economic geography". This programme lends itself very well to an analysis of economic geography and gender mainstreaming in regional policy, which we perform in this paper. We build the paper on a qualitative study in the Värmland region in the late 2000s. The study was carried out through making close readings of the growth programme documents and interactive research together with thirty appointed women in senior positions in the region. Our analysis indicates that the process of developing the growth programme was influenced by homotopical networks (place-specific male homosocial practices), as the large partnership that was formed was dominated by men and people from central areas, reconstructing past power relations. We can also conclude that the male dominated clusters were prioritised in the regional growth programme, while potentially successful clusters and innovation systems which included large numbers of women, were to a large degree excluded. We also conclude that the growth programme was not gender mainstreamed. We suggest that the concept of allowing spaces can be applied in ordet to identify alternative development possibilities and for new initiatives to take place, e.g. implying to integrate the women-dominated clusters in as potential clusters to build regional development on. Allowing spaces, we suggest, could have a potential to integrate gender into the discussion of regional development.
|
|
