During the past decades, civil servants are experiencing an increased pressure to deliver measurable impact of their work.. The quest for measurability includes the task to solve complex societal problems as gender inequality while at the same time developing the public sector itself (Newman and Clarke 2009). Civil servants are to contribute to innovation, new markets and efficiency, and at the same time uphold the rule of law, civil rights, equality and democratic ideals.
Meanwhile, gender mainstreaming has taken the steps into the regular planning and implementation of community service through management control systems (MSC). Management control systems is the process that links strategic planning and performance management in most organisations(Otley, Berry, Broadbent 1995). Little is known in previous research of the role of management control systems for implementing gender mainstreaming.
In this paper we investigate how civil servants experience management control systems for implementing gender mainstreaming. We discuss why the factors we have found are important for the implementation of gender mainstreaming and especially the tensions that arise from the need to implement strict control mechanisms to ”get the job done” and the need to foster a learning environment to enable the policy transformation that gender mainstreaming opts for.
The emprical data derives from a case study about steering - and following up gender mainstreaming in one of Swedens largest municipalities. The results indicate how civil servants develop different strategies to manage dilemmas of control and learning in and around the management control systems.
