Challenging the myth of gender equality in Sweden
Lena Martinsson, Gabriele Griffin, and Katarina Giritli Nygren
Abstract
This volume examines the diverse ways in which the myth of Sweden as the most gender-equal country in the world has been challenged both from within and from without. Detailing the appropriation of the gender equality mantra by right-wing political parties, its depoliticisation within neoliberal audit culture, the nationalist underpinnings which accompany this mantra within Sweden, and the impacts this has had on equality policies, this volume argues that the gender equality mantra in Sweden has served to reinforce heteronormative, white, middle-class norms. Racist and other oppressive stances ... More
This volume examines the diverse ways in which the myth of Sweden as the most gender-equal country in the world has been challenged both from within and from without. Detailing the appropriation of the gender equality mantra by right-wing political parties, its depoliticisation within neoliberal audit culture, the nationalist underpinnings which accompany this mantra within Sweden, and the impacts this has had on equality policies, this volume argues that the gender equality mantra in Sweden has served to reinforce heteronormative, white, middle-class norms. Racist and other oppressive stances are obscured by a rhetoric of Swedish exceptionalism. In challenging the adequacy of the current Swedish gender equality model, the contributors to this volume call for a re-thinking of political subjectivities, for an understanding of gender equality as a contested terrain, and for the re-framing of equality politics from an intersectional perspective.
Keywords:
gender equality,
sweden,
neoliberalism
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781447325963 |
| Published to Policy Press Scholarship Online: September 2016 |
DOI:10.1332/policypress/9781447325963.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Lena Martinsson, editor
University of Gothenburg
Gabriele Griffin, editor
University of York
Katarina Giritli Nygren, editor
Mid Sweden University
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