Challenging the Myth of Gender Equality in Sweden

CHALLENGING THE MYTH OF GENDER EQUALITY IN SWEDEN
Contents
List of figures and tables
	Figures
	Table
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: challenging the myth of gender equality in Sweden
	The emergence of a mythical mantra
	Critiquing the Swedish model of gender equality: key issues
	Structure of the volume
1. When feminism became gender equality and anti-racism turned into diversity management
	Introduction
	From the women’s movement to the women’s lobby
	From anti-racism to diversity management
	The intersectional challenge
	Final remarks
2. Normalisation meets governmentality: gender equality reassembled
	Introduction
	The normalisation of different articulations of gender equality
	Gender equality as something we have already accomplished and the disappearance of gender: reassembling the normal in terms of risk
	Gender equality as a measurable quantitative complementarity: reproducing gender/power relations
	Gender equality as a narrative of and for ‘us’ – by producing the ‘other’
	How is feminist critique possible when reflective critique has become part of normalisation processes, and freedom of choice the very ground for politics?
3. Emotionally charged: parental leave and gender equality, at the surface of the skin
	Introduction
	Pregnant subjectivity
	Equality politics – a politics of reversal?
	Or of corporeal permeability?
	Approaching images
	Soft touch
	The technology of garments
	Through the lens of the camera
	The white gaze
	… and the sentimental gaze
	Conclusions
4. Rethinking gender equality and the Swedish welfare state: a view from outside
	Introduction
	Migration, welfare changes and racialised violence
	‘Fear on the rise’: cultures of violence, whiteness and facelessness
	Taking the place of the subject: the fear of (small) numbers
	Masculinity in crisis
	Predatory identities and the fear of numbers, large and small
	Accounting for majoritarian fears
	Charting ambivalence: the conundrum of the individual versus the masses
	Challenging neoliberalism’s insistence on the individual: the persistence of inequalities
	Afterword
5. How is the myth of Swedish gender equality upheld outside Sweden? A case study
	The Egalia case: ‘stupefying gender madness haunts Sweden’
	The Yahya Hassan/Athena Farrokzhad case: ‘Swedish in the head’
	The Swedish gender-equality mantra
	Swedish exceptionalism
	Conclusion
6. Gender equality under threat? Exploring the paradoxes of an ethno-nationalist political party
	Introduction
	Swedish gender equality at the cross-roads
	Racism and the field of the political
	Gender and cultural-racist parties
	Women in the Sweden Democrats
	Neoliberalism, gender and support for racist parties
	Four paradoxes: a feminist reading of the Sweden Democrats
	Conclusions
7. ‘What should we do instead?’ Gender-equality projects and feminist critique
	Introduction
	The promises of gender mainstreaming: background and theoretical points of departure
	Images of Swedish gender mainstreaming
	Women’s work: a mainstreaming project
	Wearing gender spectacles
	Numbers that count
	Gender mainstreaming on the market
	Conclusions: gender mainstreaming and feminist critique
8. Frictions and figurations: gender-equality norms meet activism
	A feminist event
	A field of political struggle
	Frictions
	8 March: Women’s Day
	On not understanding the problem
	Separatist spaces
	Body talks
Afterword: rethinking gender equality
	To politicise but also challenge the gender-equality norm
	Intersectional awareness
	Don’t be nostalgic: on temporality and economic subjectivity
	Undermining the notion of gender equality as a national trait
Index