As innovation has become an increasingly common topic on policy agendas for growth, new innovative ways of organising policy processes have emerged emphasising inclusion of various stakeholders. One example is the involvement of Women Resource Centres (WRCs) in regional growth policies in Sweden, by means of public funding distributed by the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (Tillväxtverket/Nutek). The model of Women Resource Centres (WRCs) was developed in Sweden – and later also adopted in other European countries – in order to address this need, providing an infrastructure for including more women in innovation policies and innovation processes. This paper scrutinizes whether the concept ‘democratic innovation’ can be used to understand the role and impact of WRCs on gender equality in growth policies. The results expose that WRCs have strategically involved a broad spectrum of actors, sectors/industries and innovations in order to increase participation in the political decision-making processes regarding innovation and growth, in a way that coheres with the definition of democratic innovation as institutions that are specifically designed to achieve that. The type of gender quality promoted by the WRCs is more multifaceted than the type promoted by the Swedish government, however, creating a tension between women’s perception of gender equality at a grass-root level and policymakers’ influence of gender equality efforts at a management level. There has also been a change in the public funding from supporting WRC activities assisting women to realize their ideas, to supporting WRCs lobbying towards policymakers. These two aspects limit the scope of the WRCs impact on power relations and structures in growth and innovation policies by cutting off the very foundation of the broadened spectrum promoted by the WRCs – namely the contact with the entrepreneurial and innovative women, their chosen sectors/industries and their developed innovations.