Gender Equality in Swedish Public Service Television

The purpose of the article is to present and analyse how gender equality principles are implemented in the Swedish public service television Sveriges Television (SVT). The analysis takes into consideration three aspects of the equal rights approach: employment policies, sources in the news programmes and the programme content. The employment of women in public service media is discussed from the historical and legal perspective while the news sources are analysed based on contemporary research and statistics. The last part of the article focuses on examples of portrayal of women in three television series produced by SVT. One of the television series aired in 1997 was aimed at younger audience and received a Swedish prize for successful implementation of gender equality in television content while the other two are contemporary crime dramas.