The most powerful female politicians are still subordinated - A qualitative study on gender inequality in top positions in Swedish national politics

Sammanfattning: Sweden is one of the most gender-equal countries in the world and the representation in the parliament is quantitively equal. However, Sweden has never had a female prime minister and qualitative inequalities in politics persist. This caught our interest. To examine how gender inequalities in top positions in Swedish national politics can be explained, qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with members of the Swedish parliament. The empirical data was then analyzed through a theoretical framework extracted from gender theories and concepts found in previous research. The concepts are gender systems, inequality regimes and homo- and heterosociality. Our research shows that due to a division caused by different interacting inequality-producing processes, female and male politicians face different expectations and are perceived as suitable for different political areas. Based on our empirical findings, a model was developed displaying the inequality-producing processes' relative importance and interaction, causing women to be less likely to advance to top positions. With this model, we contribute to previous research by categorizing processes and highlighting the new emerging process hatred in social media. Thus, we provide a comprehensive model describing gender inequality in the context of Swedish national politics. We hope that the comprehensive model's categorization of inequality-producing processes will provide guidance in future attempts to improve gender equality.