The strategy of gender mainstreaming has now been advocated by the UN for over two decades. In many western countries, gender mainstreaming was implemented as a means to reach national policy goals of gender equality. This coincided with the implementation of New Public Management (NPM) in state governance, which has affected the practice of gender mainstreaming. NPM can be seen as a management doctrine which became institutionalized and consequently self-evident to use for all kind of policies, including that of gender equality. As a concept used for governing public sector administrations in trying to make them work more efficiently, NPM implies detailed goal setting and stricter accountability standards. In processes of becoming accountable, administrations make themselves auditable by means of more management accounting. Being able to show goal attainment quantitative measures are much more valid than qualitatively assessed aspects.
The focus on quantities is a problem concerning gender mainstreaming where gendered power relations are to be scrutinized. The management accounting systems are often regarded as gender neutral, but feminist research has shown that such a view is ignorant. To disclose gendered power relations only by the counting of women and men hampers the intended results of gender mainstreaming. From a feminist standpoint, it is not enough to discuss gender as a variable, treating women and men as two separate categories and drawing on a calculative perspective. Symbols, discourses, interactions and the shaping of individual identities are all aspects of a more diffuse and discursive kind that are impossible to represent in figures.
This paper discusses the borders constructed by NPM to gender mainstreaming. Evidence stems from a longitudinal case study of gender mainstreaming in the policy field of infrastructure and transportation in Sweden.

PhD (econ), Assistant Professor and Director of The Academy of Management Accounting and Control in Central Government (AES) at Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University. AES is a forum for thoughtful dialogues between researchers and practitioners examining how the state is governed. The research focus is on how internal management control practices functions to reach policy goals. In an interpretive critical approach by empirical case studies, we search for unintended effects. Eva’s special interest is to conduct such research including a gender perspective.

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