This study follows sixteen state-sponsored projects carried out by Swedish civil society organizations (CSOs) aiming at integrating refugees after the refugee wave in 2015. CSOs received funding for integration projects of their own design, within certain parameters. Seven years later, we interviewed churches, voluntary associations, social enterprises, and immigrant associations who had received funding, asking what projects they started, whether they continued or not, and why.

According to neo-institutional theory, organizations must meet institutional constraints to be perceived as legitimate and secure resources, but doing so may hinder the efficient execution of their core activities. Organizations address this by "loose coupling," ostensibly fulfilling formal requirements while conducting their core activities as they see fit. Except for the immigrant associations, the CSOs did not have integration as a core activity. The hypothesis was therefore that they might resort to loose coupling—doing what they deemed best, reporting what the government wanted to hear, securing long-term funds, and institutionalizing integration activities.

However, most activities were discontinued. They were not only loosely coupled but altogether decoupled from the organizations' core activities. Projects depended on the prior experiences of engaged individuals, such as teachers organizing language training, or nurses launching health projects. Reporting results proved challenging, as reporting criteria measured different outcomes than what participants considered important. Consequently, continued funding could not be secured, and the activities remained too decoupled from the organizations' core activities to be integrated into their ordinary programs. Instead of “efficient loose coupling” there was “inefficient decoupling”, and integration was not institutionalized.

Two exceptions emerged: immigrant associations, which had integration as a core activity, and a social enterprise that, upon failing to secure ongoing funding, established a new independent company. This company was financed by selling cleaning services provided by immigrant women who also received language training and support. This alignment with formal organizational frameworks led to sustainable integration activities.

The key takeaway is that for the government to engage CSOs in the long term, programs must align with their core activities, and evaluation criteria must align with the values of volunteers and participants. Theoretically, the study establishes a limit to loose coupling: activities must be somewhat aligned with the formal organizational framework to be sustainable. The concept of "inefficient decoupling" is introduced to institutional theory, elucidating instances where loose coupling fails and inefficient decoupling leads to the creation of a new formal organization capable of housing desired activities.

This study follows sixteen state-sponsored projects carried out by Swedish civil society organizations (CSOs) aiming at integrating refugees after the refugee wave in 2015. CSOs received funding for integration projects of their own design, within certain parameters. Seven years later, we interviewed churches, voluntary associations, social enterprises, and immigrant associations who had received funding, asking what projects they started, whether they continued or not, and why.

According to neo-institutional theory, organizations must meet institutional constraints to be perceived as legitimate and secure resources, but doing so may hinder the efficient execution of their core activities. Organizations address this by "loose coupling," ostensibly fulfilling formal requirements while conducting their core activities as they see fit. Except for the immigrant associations, the CSOs did not have integration as a core activity. The hypothesis was therefore that they might resort to loose coupling—doing what they deemed best, reporting what the government wanted to hear, securing long-term funds, and institutionalizing integration activities.

However, most activities were discontinued. They were not only loosely coupled but altogether decoupled from the organizations' core activities. Projects depended on the prior experiences of engaged individuals, such as teachers organizing language training, or nurses launching health projects. Reporting results proved challenging, as reporting criteria measured different outcomes than what participants considered important. Consequently, continued funding could not be secured, and the activities remained too decoupled from the organizations' core activities to be integrated into their ordinary programs. Instead of “efficient loose coupling” there was “inefficient decoupling”, and integration was not institutionalized.

Two exceptions emerged: immigrant associations, which had integration as a core activity, and a social enterprise that, upon failing to secure ongoing funding, established a new independent company. This company was financed by selling cleaning services provided by immigrant women who also received language training and support. This alignment with formal organizational frameworks led to sustainable integration activities.

The key takeaway is that for the government to engage CSOs in the long term, programs must align with their core activities, and evaluation criteria must align with the values of volunteers and participants. Theoretically, the study establishes a limit to loose coupling: activities must be somewhat aligned with the formal organizational framework to be sustainable. The concept of "inefficient decoupling" is introduced to institutional theory, elucidating instances where loose coupling fails and inefficient decoupling leads to the creation of a new formal organization capable of housing desired activities.

The FLIARA EU-funded Horizon Europe Project aims to transform the grand narrative of innovation by emphasizing both the innovations led by women and the women themselves. Its goal is to demonstrate that rural and farm women are crucial for achieving gender equality and ensuring the development and sustainability of rural communities and farms throughout Europe. Launched in January 2023, the FLIARA Project encompasses ten EU countries and includes fifteen project partners. As part of the project, each country was tasked with recommending policy changes at EU, national, regional, and local levels. In Sweden, the policy briefs that emerged focused on changes not directly targeting women innovators, entrepreneurs, or business owners. Instead, structural and societal changes were urged.

Rural women often start enterprises in sectors that are vital for long-term rural sustainability, but these organizations run the risk of not being properly recognized by public rural development support systems. In this paper, we ask whether existing business support measures meet the needs of rural women entrepreneurs, and if not, what can be improved? Our data consists of recorded interviews with twenty women entrepreneurs from the rural regions of southern Sweden. We asked how they perceive the business support that is provided, used, and needed. We found a gendered mismatch between the forms of public support provided and the support needed by women entrepreneurs in rural areas. The analysis reveals that current business support initiatives often overlook social, cultural, and environmental innovations and enterprises that do not prioritise economic growth as their primary objective, despite their importance for rural viability and development. We argue for a shift towards valuing alternative growth models, broadening eligibility criteria, and simplifying access to funding. As key players in this context, public funds should support long-term sustainability. By embracing the proposed changes, the business support system can be better aligned with the realities of rural entrepreneurship, contributing more meaningfully to rural development and gender equality.

In this study, we explore how women who are both mothers and entrepreneurs construct their subject position as mothers in the presence of dominant discourses. Based on multiple interviews with 15 participants, our findings indicate that women engage in doing and undoing motherhood. Although undoing one's motherhood is related to negotiating one's position vis-à-vis social norms and expectations, doing motherhood is related to the construction of new discourses. We illustrate how a norm-breaking motherhood discourse emerges through processes of gender abating and coalescing. In this discourse, child-rearing is not a woman's primary responsibility but is shared between the parents, and the public and private spheres—work and family—coalesce. A good mother is constructed as an individual who can pursue her passions and realize her dreams and who focuses on her relationship with her child through her work as an entrepreneur while mastering desirable attitudes and values in life. We also find that entrepreneurship can be a vehicle for escaping normative assumptions about motherhood and crafting one's "project of the self."

While research has pointed to the lack of gender mainstreaming in rural and agricultural policy, how rural policy determines what is seen as problems of gender inequality in the first place and how it constructs men and women in relation to rural development remains unexplored. In this article we perform an in-depth analysis of how rural policy constructs gender inequality problems and gendered subjects. We employ the 'What's the problem represented to be' approach to analyse the implementation of the European Union's Rural Development Policy in one Swedish region, Jönköping County. We conclude that gender inequality is largely left unproblematic in relation to rural development, placing women in the subject position of being uninterested in rural development policy and lacking the ability to take it on. The focus on farmers and ICT broadband positions adult, Swedish-born men as the norm, reflecting a neoliberal emphasis on economic growth through competitive businesses. We also conclude that the policy twists 'gender mainstreaming' by claiming that it promotes gender equality, while it in fact takes no action. Paying lip service to gender equality rural policy thereby co-opts feminism, in line with a neoliberal 'postfeminist' discourse, which is harmful to the feminist project. Alternative approaches to gender inequalities suggest that there may be broader, and different, ways of discussing them in relation to rural development, making for a broader spectrum of problematisations and subject positions, which may, in turn, allow a transformation towards gender equality.