Challenging the Myth of Gender Equality in Sweden

Gender studies and other scholars from Sweden present eight essays that challenge the idea of gender equality in Sweden and consider the norms, emotions, challenges, and fantasies produced through this model. They argue that the norm of gender equality in Sweden builds on and produces naturalized, nationalist, heteronormative and cisnormative, and racialized attitudes, and examine the reality of equality politics and policies in relation to their implementation. They address the production of nationalism through the gender-equality project, how the norm creates a specific idea of the Swedish nation and its gender-equal future but recreates the hierarchical order in relation to other countries, how the norm recreates the genders in heteronormative and cisnormative ways, the role of neoliberalism, and the relationship between gender equalities and feminism. The essays discuss how social mobilization around feminist politics and anti-racism became state policy; how different interpretations of gender equality and connections to neoliberalism occur in welfare institutions and policy, and effects on feminist theory and agency; the role of visual material in parental leave information; gendered constructions of racism in Swedish internationalized popular culture, particularly the works of Henning Mankell; how the myth of Swedish gender equality is viewed outside the country; how the racist Sweden Democrats use ideas of gender equality for non-equality purposes; gender mainstreaming and its alternatives; and how feminism and gender-equality norms are criticized by researchers and activists. Distributed in North America by University of Chicago Press. Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)