Women resource centres : a quattro helix innovation system on the European agenda

Abstract

In the early 1990s public funds were initiated by the Swedish government, channelled through the County Administrative Boards, to encourage the establishment of Women Resource Centres (WRCs). Since then, WRCs all over the country have worked to increase women's participation in regional development. According to an earlier study, WRCs have systematically organized innovation systems at the local, regional and national level in Sweden by linking actors from different spheres of society around topics such as new technology, culture and service industry. 2 Gradually, the Swedish innovation system of WRCs has expanded internationally through funding from various European Union funds encouraging transnational cooperation. In 2006 the European association WINNET Europe was formed, gathering WRCs from 21 countries. In this paper, we set out to analyse how WRCs have organised an innovation system on the European level, gathering actors from different spheres of society encountering both support and resistance. We describe this process of internationalisation in the light of theories of innovation systems and triple helix. The questions we try to answer are: Which actors have been mobilised and what resistance and successes has been encountered? How might these factors be related to the ambition of gender mainstreaming in Sweden and EU? 1. Innovation systems and gender equality in policy and research 1.1 Broad and narrow approach to innovation systems During the last decades, innovation has emerged as an area for public policy efforts in Sweden (as well as in several other EU member states). The efforts aim to increase the number of innovations in society, in the form of new goods, services, business models, markets, processes, organisation and competences. 3 Among other things, Sweden’s innovation policy have comprised the elaboration of a national strategy for innovation 4 and public funding of regional and sectoral innovation systems (both established and sprouting ones). 5 Such funding has been granted to constellations where actors from the public, private and academic sector have created arenas for interaction, thus following the model of ‘triple helix’. 6 The main