In Finland as in other European countries gender equality has been promoted through political struggles, legislation, research and equality training. In education a great amount of equality work has been carried out since the 1970s, for example in co-operation with schools, universities, vocational training, teachers, students, researchers, ministries of education and also with a larger part of working life and the business sector (for example, Holli 2003; Brunila et al. 2005; Brunila 2009; Lahelma 2010).

However, the practices of the Finnish equality work have changed significantly especially after Finland joined European Union. Equality work has been caught up in market-oriented and project-based activities. A history of hundreds of national and international projects and reports have repeated the same aims, ideas and practical innovations for promoting gender equality, challenging educational segregation, providing girl friendly or boy friendly pedagogies etc. They have raised awareness towards diversity issues, but most of activities have been targeted into girls’ and women's educational choices towards male-dominated branches, such as the technology sector (Vehviläinen et al. 2007.) In spite of thirty years of equality work, very little change has taken place.

In this paper we ask, why the change is so slow. Our aim is to discuss some of the persistent constraints that equality work repeatedly faces. We disclose power relations that form the ways equality work operates. In addition to this, we consider it to be crucial to open up channels that allow creating distance with and within power relations. By discussing with people (teachers, trainers, researchers, project workers and students) who have promoted equality in education, we have been able to look for new and opening ways to conceptualize equalitywork. Among disclosing how power relations work we show how they can be utilized.

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