Ann Towns - Gender Equal State of Sweden

Paradoxes of (In)Equality
Something is Rotten in the Gender Equal

State of Sweden
ANN TOWNS
ABSTRACT
This article analyzes how gender equality, paradoxically, has helped
produce one unifying identity of the state of Sweden while simultane-
ously creating divisions within that state. In the 1990s, Sweden came to
understand itself as the gender equality champion internationally,
having come the ‘furthest’ in empowering women politically and eco-
nomically. However, this equality discourse has also become implicated
in a new inequality, namely the hierarchical categorization of the pop-
ulation of Sweden into ‘Swedes’ and ‘immigrants’. The article shows
that simultaneous with Sweden becoming the ‘gender equal state’ vis-
à-vis other states, representations of gender unequal ‘immigrants’ have
become prominent.
Keywords: constructivism; gender; immigrants; state identity; Sweden;
women
‘In Sweden, we have come far by international comparison; in fact, we have

come the farthest in the world. We gladly share our experiences, we readily
export our Swedish model for gender equality.’ (Government communication
on gender equality policy: Skr, 1999/2000: 24, p.6)
On 1 January 2001, Sweden assumed the presidency of the Council of

Ministers of the European Union. For the presidency, Sweden had declared
gender equality a prioritized goal to permeate all other issue areas.1
European ministers were accordingly invited to a ‘Gender Equality and
Social Security’ conference as the very first meeting of the Swedish presi-
dency in January. Before the gathering, Minister of Gender Equality
Margareta Winberg declared her ambition to export ‘Swedish daycare’ and
the ‘Nordic model’ of social insurance and taxation, which are based on the
individual rather than on the family (Göteborgsposten, 24 January 2001).
As part of the preparations for the presidency, gender equality had been
declared part of the state’s effort to ‘exhibit Swedish culture in Europe’
(eu2001.se, 2001:16). As a component of the ‘new picture of Sweden to be
Cooperation and Conflict: Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association

Vol. 37(2): 157–179. Copyright ©2002 NISA
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158 COOPERATION AND CONFLICT 37(2)
launched during the Swedish presidency of the EU’, a photo exhibit of

gender equality was displayed in the European Council, coupled with a
series of seminars on gender equality, for the duration of the presidency
(Göteborgsposten, 5 October 2000). Sweden has come ‘far’, we learn on the
presidency web site; in fact, farthest in the world in the area of gender
equality.
In June 2000, readers of Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden’s second largest
daily newspaper, were informed about a meeting on masculinity, gender
equality and power in the family in Hallonbergen outside Stockholm
(Svenska Dagbladet, ‘Manligheten. Vem skall ha makten i familjen?’ 6 June
2000). The Bosnian Islamic Congregation had invited members of the
‘Dialogue Project’ of Swedish Save the Children, a project aimed at
opening spaces for discussion on gender equality among various immigrant
groups. In the extensive article, we learn that Swedish men, like the Swedish
state, have come ‘far’ in the area of gender equality. ‘Many Swedish men
may have a confused picture of masculinity’, the reader is told, ‘but they
have come a long way when it comes to gender equality and an expanded
male role. They have a lot to give to men from strongly patriarchal cultures,
if only there were meeting points’. Just as gender equality sets aside the
Swedish state from other states, the article informs us that gender equality
characterizes the Swedish, in contrast to the non-Swedish, male residents of
the country:
On one side, there were two representatives for a modern, Swedish, well
thought out attitude to gender equality, which few Swedish men probably live
up to in reality. On the other side 30 Muslim men and a (quiet) veiled woman
from Bosnia who has probably hardly begun questioning her traditional
views.
The aim of this article is to demonstrate that jämställdhet — gender

equality2 — has become an important terrain on which both Swedish state
identity and ethnic subjectivities in Sweden are negotiated. Critical con-
structivists have long argued that the practice of foreign policy entails
identity-forming processes that help differentiate states from one another.
This article shows that, paradoxically, the very foreign policy processes that
reproduce the state as a unified actor may simultaneously create and sus-
tain divisions within the state. At the same time as Sweden emerged as a
gender-equal state in the mid-1990s, I contend, gender equality became a
salient terrain of differentiation between people residing in Sweden,
between ‘immigrants’ and ‘Swedes’. To make this claim, I trace the shifting
representations of ‘immigrants’ in the Swedish media and academia since
the Second World War, showing that it was not until Sweden emerged as a
gender-equal state that gender inequality was regularly presented as a char-
acteristic of the ‘culture’ of ‘immigrants’.
The rest of the article is divided into three sections. The first provides a
brief treatment of the notion of state identities, coupled with a brief back-
ground elaboration on ethnicity in Sweden and a note on methodology.
For present purposes, the second section provides a truncated discussion of

TOWNS: PARADOXES OF (IN)EQUALITY 159
the emergence of Sweden as the ‘gender-equal state’. The third section is

granted most analytical discussion, dealing with the development of gender
equality as a terrain of differentiation between ‘Swedes’ and ‘immigrants’ in
the 1990s.
State Identities and Ethnicity: Studying Sweden as a Gender-

Equal State
The past two decades have seen the emergence of the study of state identi-
ties within constructivist IR. Though their approaches vary, as I will discuss
below, constructivists generally agree that state identity refers to construc-
tions of the state Self — a set of understandings and social practices that
render the state a cohesive being with certain interests and capacities for
action. State identity, furthermore, is analytically distinct from national
identity:
[A]s a result of their profoundly different modes of structuring (one operat-

ing in strict accord with geographic vicinity, the other maintaining an unstable
balance between geographic vicinity and ethnic affinity), states and nations
represent qualitatively different organizational ‘logics’. (Lapid and
Kratochwil, 1996: 123)
The project of the modern nation-state is, of course, to merge these two
identities.
The meta-theoretical differences among two loosely defined groups of
constructivist IR scholars — conventional (modernist) and critical (post-
structural/radical) — have been well debated.3 However, there are also
important variations in their empirical foci. Whereas critical constructivists
have placed identity at the center of their agenda, conventional construc-
tivists have developed the study of norms. Thus, with the exception of
Wendt (e.g. 1999), the relatively few conventional constructivists that
deploy identity provide little in terms of theoretical depth and elaboration
(e.g. Katzenstein, 1996; Risse et al., 1999; Gurowitz, 1999). Still, it seems
clear that certain shared assumptions about state identity set these scholars
apart from their critical counterparts. Most importantly, the ‘domestic’ is
problematically assumed to be already constituted as a space separate from
the ‘international’, with domestic politics the primary source for state
identity. Katzenstein (1996), for instance, sees state identities as ‘variations
across countries in the statehood that is enacted domestically and projected
internationally’ (p. 6). Wendt has made more elaborate theoretical efforts
to defend a notion of states as partially ontologically prior to international
politics (1999:193–245). It is onto the corporate, pre-social identity of the
state that its social identities develop through the interactions of interna-
tional politics. And, Wendt claims, certain social identities stem primarily
from relations to domestic society, such as ‘liberal’ and ‘democratic’, and
thus do not require international interaction for their maintenance (1994,
1999). State identity, in this sense, can then easily become understood as a

set of characteristics, ‘rendered in essentialist ways as a variable that can be

inserted into already existing theoretical commitments’ (Campbell, 1998:
218).
Critical constructivists, in contrast, make the discursive construction of
the ‘domestic’/‘international’ divide, the inside/outside boundaries of the
state, the object of inquiry (e.g. Ashley, 1987; Shapiro, 1988; Campbell, 1998;
Weber, 1994; Weldes et al., 1999). The very constitution of a state, these
scholars convincingly contend, depends on the continuous creation of
boundaries between the state Self and Others. Rather than a set of charac-
teristics of an already existing state actor, identity is explicitly understood
as a process of differentiation that makes the state intelligible as a social
being and enables its concrete institutional manifestations. Even identities
such as ‘liberal’ and ‘democratic’ depend on a process of constituting non-
liberal and non-democratic Others. Here, state identity is not securely
grounded in the domestic sphere and prior to foreign rela-tions. Instead,
foreign policy is part of the political practices that make certain actors and
practices ‘foreign’ and external and thus shape the state Self, ‘a sort of
boundary producing political performance’ (Ashley, 1987: 51). State identi-
ties, finally, are not coherent and unified wholes, as various discourses situ-
ate and structure the state differently (Barnett, 1993). Although prominent,
Swedish gender equality identity has not come to produce the Swedish state
in its entirety, within all issue areas or in all contexts.
Sharing the analytical approach to state identity of critical constructivists,
I wish to make two contributions to this line of scholarship. So far, critical
scholars have tended to analyze how the ontological security of the state is
tenuously maintained through discourses of ‘threatening’ and ‘dangerous’
Others. Like the contributors to a recent special issue of Cooperation and
Conflict who analyze how gender informs the state identities of Denmark
and Sweden (Kronsell and Svedberg, 2001; Richey, 2001; Petersen, 2001), I
focus on a state identity that is less centrally implicated in the construction
of Other actors as ‘threats’ or ‘enemies’ – Sweden as a gender-equal state.
In doing so, the aim is to help broaden the discussion of the many possible
ways that state identities can be performed.
Second, and more importantly, critical constructivist research on state
identities has tended to focus on and thus designate difference as inter-
national, as between states or groups of states. State identity, in this view,
centrally concerns eliminating or masking difference within the state
through representations of difference between the state Self and external
Others. This article demonstrates that, paradoxically, the identity-forming
processes of differentiation vis-à-vis Other states can also help create
divisions within the state Self. The production of outward cohesion may
simultaneously engender divisions within a nation-state, thus making the
unity of the state actor a tenuous and illusory process.
Finally, a note on methodology. Ideally, studying state identities entails
interpreting not only textual representations but also other forms of social
practice. For now, my analysis is largely one of rhetorical representations,
coupled with some incorporation of social practice. I approach the Ministry
for Foreign Affairs as a main site for Swedish state identities, and I see MFA

publications as central to this analysis. In addition to reading these publica-

tions broadly to reach an understanding of the international fora that pri-
marily generate Sweden as a gender-equal state, I have focused the analysis
on the annual foreign policy declarations, as well as speeches and texts that
deal with Sweden in the UN and the EU.4 By analyzing both the foreign
policy declarations and the Swedish speeches in the UN world conferences
on women from 1975 to the present, I am able to gauge shifts in Swedish
identity over time. In addition, Sweden’s entry into the EU in 1995 and its
taking over the presidency of the European Council of Ministers in January
2001 provided particularly good opportunities for studying Swedish
identity in the European context.
‘Immigrants’ and ‘Swedes’ as Ethnic Categories

A central contention of this article is that gender equality does not operate
as a mere descriptor of the practices of already defined ethnic groups.
Instead, gender equality has become one of the discourses constitutive of
the very categories of ‘Swedes’ and ‘immigrants’. As Brubaker argues,
national minorities and ethnic groups are ‘not given by the facts of ethnic
demography’ nor do they form a ‘static ethno-democratic condition’ (1995:
112). Similarly, ‘immigrant cultures’, as Ålund persuasively insists, are not
‘imported baggage’, but are rather ‘formed within the framework of both
pre- and post-migratory antagonisms’ (1991: 53). Conceptions of ‘biological
race’ have not been important to the Swedish nation since the Second
World War (nor has a shared sense of history), but the Swedish language
and the promulgation of core values and practices have taken center stage
in the constitution of ‘Swedes’ (e.g. Brune, 2000). Relatedly, few identity
categories have developed that resemble the ethnic categories that funda-
mentally shape US society (such as ‘white’, ‘Asian-American’ or
‘Hispanic’). Instead, ‘immigrants’ and ‘Swedes’ have become increasingly
important ethnic groupings, only loosely connected to actual, technical
immigration.5
Ethnic fluidity has been a conscious though often contradictory political
strategy since the mid-1970s, when the government declared Sweden a
‘multi-cultural society’ in which immigrants were promised the opportunity
to choose the extent to which they adopt a Swedish cultural identity.6
Without a strict technical definition, ‘immigrants’ have largely come to sig-
nify, in former Minister of Immigration Maj-Lis Lööw’s words ‘people who
do not have Swedish identity’ (as quoted in Svenska Dagbladet ‘Staten vill
diskriminera svenskar och invandrare’, 28 March 1996). In the ethnic, non-
technical sense, then, the meanings of ‘Swede’ and ‘immigrant’ have
become mutually constitutive: being an ‘immigrant’ means not being a
‘Swede’ and vice versa. Gender equality, as this article demonstrates below,
has recently become one central component in the construction of these
categories.
To create a historical narrative of the shifting representations of ‘Swedes’
and ‘immigrants’, I used printed news media and academic publications
as sources. While the press and academia report events and reproduce

predominant understandings and practices in society, they are also impor-

tant participants in the processes that constitute the subject positions
‘Swede’ and ‘immigrant’. In other words, these social institutions are not
mere reflections of their surroundings, but also help produce that environ-
ment. However, I approach them simply as two of many important arenas
in which ethnicity in Sweden is negotiated. The survey of scholarship on
‘immigrants’ was conducted at the University of Göteborg library and
covered the period of the 1950s to the present. For the examination of press
representations, in turn, I used the index Svenska Tidningsartiklar (Swedish
Newspaper Articles) from 1975 to the present, which lists titles and a sum-
mary of the contents of articles in the major newspapers. For the periods
when there was a dramatic increase in articles on the gender oppression of
‘immigrant’ women, I once again used the University of Göteborg library
for a close textual reading of nearly 70 relevant articles.
The Production of Sweden as a Gender-Equal State
In the early to mid-1990s, Sweden, like the other Nordic countries,

developed an identity as a gender-equal state, with Swedish international
advocacy for gender equality increasing dramatically.7 For instance, gender
equality has been discussed every year in the cabinet’s annual foreign pol-
icy declarations to parliament since 1995, having only been mentioned
three times previously.8 In 1996, gender equality became an explicit aim of
all Swedish international development cooperation for the first time. Since
its entry into the EU in 1995, gender equality has been a priority policy area
for Swedish work with Europe. Since the mid-1990s, furthermore, interna-
tional improvements in gender equality have routinely been referred to ‘as
a considerable success for Sweden’ in state publications, and gender equal-
ity is represented as a ‘Swedish question’.
The gender equality identity was incorporated into previous Swedish
representations of the Self as a ‘model’ state with ‘moral obligations’ to
the international community. Since the Second World War, the Swedish
state has developed an understanding of itself as ‘morally immaculate’ —
a ‘moral superpower’ (Nilsson, 1991) — and, as such, an ‘ideal’ for other
states (Ruth, 1984; Nilsson, 1991). Not simply a passive ‘model’, Sweden
has understood itself to have the duty to assist imitation. The ‘appeal to
duty, plikt’, as Kronsell and Svedberg (2001) explain, ‘has widespread appli-
cation in Swedish politics’ (157–8), including in international politics. As
a ‘small state’ without a colonial past, and informed by socialist inter-
nationalism and a sense of duty, Sweden has represented itself as an actor
with a moral obligation to advocate the plight of ‘weak’ actors and ‘small’
states (Nilsson, 1991). Swedish foreign policy has reflected (and helped
produce) this identity. For instance, this ‘moral vision’ is closely tied to
Sweden’s foreign aid practices (Lumsdaine, 1993). Sweden has also been
a vocal critic of ‘imperialist’ interventions in the Third World, perhaps
particularly US involvement in Vietnam, Central America and Chile, but
also of Soviet interventions abroad.9 The intensity and scope of these cri-

tiques led Jönsson and Petersson (1985) to call Sweden the ‘Mouse that
Roared’.
In the post-war period, a conscious and pronounced identity of being a
‘modern’ state also emerged, as the Swedish state came to represent itself
as the most ‘modern’ social formation of rationally developed institutions
that provide efficient, democratic and just solutions to collective problems
(e.g. Ruth, 1984; Löfgren, 1993; Nilsson, 1991). With higher levels of educa-
tion, more developed infrastructure, better hygiene and higher life
expectancy, Sweden defined itself against less ‘modern’ states, representing
itself as ‘about 20 years ahead of the rest of the world’ (Nilsson, 1991: 117).
As a ‘modern’ state, Sweden also saw itself as having been liberated from
nationalism, with ‘reason’ and ‘rationality’ ruling the country (Löfgren,
1993: 29). In sum, understanding itself as the ‘avant garde’ in various
regards, post-war Sweden has often represented itself both as an ‘ideal’ for
other states that have not come as ‘far’ in their maturity process and as
having the moral responsibility to enable such emulation.
It was out of these pre-existing identities of being a ‘modern’ and pro-
gressive ‘model’ with the duty to encourage imitation that the ‘gender-equal
state’ emerged. In state publications in preparation for EU membership,
we can read that ‘expectations on the Swedish membership and what this
may mean for the EU’s gender equality work are large. This has placed
special demands for Swedish contributions in various areas’ (Skr
1996/97:41, 73). Also, ‘many EU-countries inquire for Swedish experiences
in the area of gender equality and Sweden is often considered a model
country’ (p. 72).
A strong sense of being ‘ahead’ of the pack in the sphere of gender equal-
ity also developed. Some variation on the statement ‘from an international
perspective, Sweden has come far in the area of gender equality’ is so often
repeated in such a range of state publications that it almost reads as a
mantra, a required introduction to any discussion of gender in Sweden.10 As
an illustrative example, the ambition to stay at ‘the head’ of developments,
combined with a sense of obligation, was used to motivate under-secretaries
of state and chief civil servants to attend a seminar on gender equality in
anticipation of the EU presidency. The invitation reads:
If Sweden is to keep its head position and answer to the expectations of other
countries, we must be able to demonstrate that our work is resolute, struc-
tured and goal-oriented. Each ministry and policy area is expected to high-
light the gender equality perspective within its policy spheres.
(‘Regeringskansliets inbjudan till seminarium inför ordförandeskapet i EU:
Jämställdhet – från ord till handling’, 5 May 2000)
How, then, was gender equality incorporated into Swedish state identity?
In the early to mid-1990s, several processes seem to have coalesced:
Swedish membership in the EU in 1995; the declaration of Sweden as the
most gender-equal state at the Fourth World Conference on Women in
Beijing 1995; the declaration by the Interparliamentary Union that Sweden
had the most gender-equal political system in 1995; and the 1994 elections

which largely centered on gender equality. At a historical juncture in the

early to mid-1990s, I suggest, all of these processes and events helped pro-
duce Sweden as a gender-equal state. Membership in the EU has meant
that the attempts to define what it means to be Swedish in the European
context have increased. During the preparations for potential membership
in the early 1990s, questions on the consequences for Sweden were
addressed, which shaped and negotiated Swedish state identity in various
ways. How did Sweden compare with other EU members? What were the
commonalities, and in which areas and ways was Sweden different from
the rest of Europe? As part of these preparations, an official investigation
of the consequences of membership for social welfare and gender equality
in Sweden was commissioned by the government. The final report con-
cluded that Sweden and the rest of the Nordic countries were ‘ahead’ of
Europe in gender equality work (SOU, 1993: 117). It furthermore suggested
that the other European countries had ‘high expectations’ for an active
Swedish role on gender equality issues – Sweden was obligated to share
its expertise and know-how with the rest of Europe. Upon becoming a
member in 1995, as elaborated above, gender equality has been one of the
prioritized areas and identified as a ‘Swedish question’.
A second important contribution to the creation of the gender equal
state was the international process of promoting the advancement of
women within the United Nations, including the Decade on Women and
CEDAW (the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination
Against Women). These initiatives have involved the development of
indices on the status of women in order to rank and measure progress
among states. The indicators thus created the conditions of possibility for
comparison among states on the levels of gender equality around the
world. For more than a decade, the UNDP Human Development Report
has published data on female–male gaps in, for instance, life expectancy,
literacy rates, school enrolment and labor force participation. From 1990
to 1994, Sweden was ranked fourth or fifth according to these measure-
ments. Then, in 1995, two new indices were introduced – the Gender-
Related Development Index11 (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment
Measure12 (GEM). According to both of these indices, Sweden emerged
as number one, the most gender-equal state in the world. At the 1995
Beijing conference, therefore, Sweden was officially granted an award as
the most gender-equal state, a prize given to Foreign Minister Mona Sahlin
at the hands of American actress Jane Fonda. This event seems to have
made a great impression and has since been frequently cited in state publi-
cations. A month earlier, the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union had
ranked Sweden number one in terms of share of female members of par-
liament.
Lastly, the 1994 national elections – sometimes referred to as the ‘gender
equality’ elections – placed gender equality squarely on the public agenda.
After the levels of female legislative representation had dropped between
the 1988 and 1991 elections, and with general contractions in the welfare
state, there was substantial mobilization by women which almost led to the
formation of a separate women’s party. After the elections, the levels of

female representation reached a record high and all the parties had looked
over their gender equality policies and party practices.
Gender Equality and the Construction of ‘Immigrants’
In the 1990s, not only did gender equality emerge as a key component of
Swedish state identity, helping differentiate the Swedish state from other
states, it also became central in the ongoing constructions of ‘Swedes’ and
their various ‘immigrant’ others among those living within Swedish state
borders. These negotiations have taken place in various arenas. As I demon-
strate below, in the second half of the decade, newspaper articles abounded
on the topic of ‘immigrants’ and gender (in)equality. However, the issue was
not solely of interest to the press. For instance, in 1997, Parliament
conducted a seminar and panel discussion on ‘immigrant’ integration and
gender equality, and a number of MPs have been active in the public
debates on gender and ‘immigrants’. Several television programs (e.g. ‘Fittja
Paradiso’ on SVT1, 17 February 2000, and ‘14 år och brud’ SVT1, 19 June
2000), successful big-screen movies (e.g. Jalla! Jalla!, 2000 and Vingar av
Glas, 2000) and popular books have been produced on the topic of gender
equality and ‘cultural’ differences between ‘immigrants’ and ‘Swedes’. In
the conviction of a man of Palestinian origin for pre-meditated murder of
his daughter, the district court of Lindesberg reduced the sentence to
manslaughter, citing ‘cultural difference’. NGOs and grass-roots organiza-
tions have participated as well, with initiatives such as the Dialogue Project
on integration and gender mentioned previously, and the project Immigrant
Women for Gender Equality in the New Millennium orchestrated by SIOS,
a cooperative organ for 14 immigrant organizations. In February 2000, the
Turkish Youth Association in concert with the Turkish, Iranian, Greek,
Kurdish and Chilean national associations arranged a panel debate entitled
‘Rape is Not Caused by Culture’ in Folkets Hus, Rinkeby. Gender equality,
in short, has become an important site for negotiating and creating mean-
ing for the people of the new, ‘multi-cultural’ nation of Sweden.
Post-Second World War ‘Immigrant’ Workers

Throughout the twentieth century, contrary to popular belief, a fairly steady
stream of people of non-Swedish citizenship has immigrated to Sweden
(Demker and Malmström, 1999).13 However, the representations of the
category ‘immigrants’, like the conceptualization of ‘Swedes’, changed sig-
nificantly during the post-Second World War period. From the 1960s to the
mid-1980s, the Swedish social and public landscape was dominated by a
largely Marxian ontology that centered on ‘work’, ‘class conflict’ and ‘eco-
nomic inequalities’. This world-view provided a particular lens through
which to make sense of Swedish society, its actors and the processes pro-
ductive of social outcomes. This lens helped interpret and give meaning to
the people who immigrated from Yugoslavia, Italy, Turkey and Greece dur-
ing the late 1950s and early 1960s, the thousands of Polish Jews, Hungarians

and Czechs as well as Portuguese, Spaniards and Greeks who fled authori-
tarianism to Sweden during the same period; and it helped to explain the
increase in non-Nordic immigration of refugees that began in the mid-
1970s. Throughout most of the post-war period, ‘Swedes’ seldom discussed
or understood themselves as a people with a national culture or history
(Ehn, 1993: 259). In fact, paradoxically, being ‘Swedish’ largely rested on a
rejection of nationalism and patriotism. ‘Class struggle’ and ‘production’,
not ‘culture’, were understood as the driving forces of the social world. The
problems and well-being of ‘immigrants’ and ‘Swedes’ were subsequently
fitted into the framework of ‘work’ and ‘the economy’. ‘Immigrants’ were
discussed primarily as ‘labor’, and the media representations centered on
the risks of ‘immigrants’ ending up at the bottom of Swedish class society
(Schwarz, 1971; Ehn, 1993: 259).
Through these lenses, it was difficult to see either gender or women in
arenas other than work. Therefore, discussions of ‘women’s liberation’ of
the 1960s and 1970s were largely centered on integrating women into the
paid labor market. Public daycare, employment in the public sector and
paid parental leave were understood as central components for increasing
the status of women, ‘Swedes’ and ‘immigrants’ alike. Gender equality as
such was thus still not something presented as distinguishing ‘Swede’ from
‘immigrant’. In fact, until the late 1970s, the discussions of ‘immigrants’
continued to pay virtually no attention to women. Instead, ‘immigrants’ in
these accounts often seem to have men as a referent, with the ‘immigrant’
problematic defined thereafter. Although employment was seen as central
to integration and a successful life, work was also the source of many of
the integration problems of ‘immigrants’: culture shocks, discrimination,
and so on. With women ‘immigrants’ less exposed to paid work, they were
also sheltered from these problems.
By the mid-1980s, refugees emerged as the primary group of immigrants
to Sweden. Nearly thirty thousand Iranians and tens of thousands of Iraqis
(many of them Kurds) as well as thousands of Somalis, Ethiopians,
Vietnamese and Latin Americans immigrated to the country in the 1980s
(Demker and Malmström, 1999: 48). At this time, ‘culture’-specific gender
oppression was still not often associated with ‘immigrants’, nor was gender
equality predominantly presented as a specifically ‘Swedish’ characteristic.
In fact, gender equality was sometimes represented as a threat to the con-
tinuity of ‘Swedish’ culture rather than a part of it, as women’s entrance into
the paid labor market was thought to have wide-reaching cultural conse-
quences.14 During the 1980s, researchers and the media took a growing
interest in the position of ‘immigrant’ women as workers (e.g. Matocic,
1986). The ‘immigrant’ worker thus ceased to be male by default. A number
of reports centered on the risks of ‘immigrant’ women being squeezed out
of the labor market as a result of changes in production processes (e.g.
Knocke, 1986; DEIFO, 1987; Davies and Esseveld, 1988), and on the risks of
occupational injuries associated with their monotonous and physically
stressful job situations (e.g. Jonung, 1982). The framework for understand-
ing the well-being of ‘immigrant’ women (and men) was thus still largely
that of capitalist production and the labor market.

‘Yesterday Another Immigrant Woman Was

Murdered — for Cultural Reasons’
(Aftonbladet, 10 February 1997)
During the 1990s, conceptions of the ‘multi-cultural Sweden’ had a major

breakthrough, with ‘culture’ and ‘cultural difference’ entering the discus-
sions of ‘immigrants’ and ‘Swedes’ alongside ‘production’ and ‘work’
(Ålund and Schierup, 1991; Demker and Malmström, 1999: 106). Beginning
in 1989, immigration from the former Yugoslavia increased dramatically as
a result of the war, and former Yugoslavians came to constitute by far the
largest group of immigrants of the 1980s and 1990s. Immigration from Iran,
Iraq and the horn of Africa continued as well, as did immigration from the
Nordic countries, Europe and the rest of the world. In the 1990s, the news
media and academic reports were still concerned with questions of dis-
crimination against ‘immigrants’ and problems in the labor and housing
markets, and there was a surge of concern about racist and neo-fascist
violence against ‘immigrants’.
However, in the mid-1990s, gender equality emerged as strongly associ-
ated with ‘Swedish culture’ and thus a framework for interpreting dif-
ferences between ‘Swedes’ and ‘immigrants’. While the 1994 elections may
have activated and intensified discussions on gender equality, the simulta-
neous proclamations of Sweden as a gender-equal state helped ‘Swedes’
understand themselves as the gender equal people. Sweden’s entry into the
EU generated a host of comparative newspaper articles on the status of
women in Europe and Sweden between 1990 and 1995, arguing that
Europe’s women needed Swedish membership. Furthermore, the UN and
IPU prizes touched off a series of articles with headlines such as ‘Sweden
got Prize in Gender Equality’ (Svenska Dagbladet, 8 September 1995),
‘Sweden a Champion on Gender Equality’ (Dagens Nyheter, 8 September
1995) and ‘Sweden Best at Electoral Gender Equality’ (Svenska Dagbladet,
28 August 1995). As gender equality became incorporated as an over-
arching foreign aid goal, MP Barbro Westerholm, cited in a
Göteborgsposten article on the ‘export of Swedish gender equality’, stated
that ‘we have come a far way with gender equality, but it looks bad in the
rest of the world’ (Göteborgsposten, 28 March 1995). A steady stream of
writing on how Europe looks to Sweden for gender equality had developed
since 1995. ‘Europe’s women get advice in Sweden’ (Göteborgsposten, 5
May 2000), ‘The gender-equal Swedish model — with extensive parental
leave and public daycare — is exported to the EU’ (Dagens Nyheter, 23
January 2001) and ‘Sweden is host for conference on gender equality’
(Göteborgsposten, 31 January 1999) were common headlines in any
Swedish newspaper. We learn that:
[W]hen French tourists come to Stockholm, they say that rather than the
castle or National Museum, what they remember of Sweden are these men
who fetch and leave children at daycare, jeans-clad men and men in suits, with
a cell phone in one hand and a baby carriage in the other. (Göteborgsposten,
5 October 2000)

In the media, gender equality was clearly associated with ‘Sweden’, ambigu-
ously referring to both the Swedish state and the ‘Swedish’ people.
The new ‘cultural’ framework and the connection of gender equality with
‘Swedish culture’ created the ability to see ‘immigrants’ and ‘Swedes’ dif-
ferently than previously possible. Consequently, the gender inequalities
residing in ‘cultural’ traditions became represented as a major problem of
‘immigrant’ women. Headlines such as ‘Oppression of Women as Culture’
(Svenska Dagbladet, 27 February 1997) and ‘A Cultural Question that is
Abused’ (Arbetet Nyheterna, 11 February 1997) abounded. ‘Culture’, in
these accounts, was presented in a structurally holist manner, as unchang-
ing baggage that ‘immigrants’ bring with them to Sweden and which then
continues to determine their behavior until they are freed from their
‘culture’ through successful adoption of ‘Swedish’ values (thus becoming
‘Swedish’). Forcefully causal of behavior, ‘culture’ furthermore constructed
a fundamental and apparently clear fault-line between ‘Swedes’ and ‘immi-
grants’. As gender inequality — including violence against women, patri-
archal control of female family members’ sexuality and even murder —
involved practices whose root causes were to be found in the ‘culture’ of
origin, all ‘immigrants’ were presented as at risk. In implicit contrast,
‘Swedish’ men who beat or murdered their partners or daughters appeared
as individual exceptions to a ‘culture’ which generally encourages gender
equality.
The incorporation of gender equality into ‘Swedish’ culture and gender
inequality into the ‘cultures’ of ‘immigrants’ allowed journalists to see
patterns of behavior where they may not have appeared previously. For
instance, at the beginning of 1997, a mass of articles appeared in all the
major newspapers connecting a series of cases of murders by men or of
violence against female family members through ‘immigrant culture’. The
murder of an ‘Iraqi’ (sometimes confused with ‘Iranian’) girl in Umeå by
her brother and cousin was connected with a near-lethal stabbing of a
‘Turkish’ 21-year-old woman by her brother in Stockholm and the murder
of a ‘Lebanese’ woman by her ex-husband in Malmö. Murders and beatings
of women and girls by ‘Kurds’, ‘Croatians’, ‘Kosovo-Albanians’, ‘Turks’,
‘Bosnians’, ‘Lebanese’ and other non-‘Swedish’ men were connected as
‘immigrant’ and separated from violence at the hands of ‘Swedes’. The
accounts do not afford these men any ‘Swedish’ traits. Thus, despite being
Swedish citizens and having lived all or a substantial part of their lives in
Sweden (which in a different interpretative framework would render these
men ‘Swedish’), they appear as ‘Turks’, ‘Lebanese’ or simply ‘immigrants’.
Similar causal narratives were reproduced and circulated in all the main
newspapers: ‘immigrant’ women were the victims of a ‘clash of cultures’, in
which they sought the freedom that a ‘Swedish’ lifestyle affords. The
violence, in these accounts, constitutes ‘retaliations against immigrant
women who break family norms’ and who attempt to ‘live like Swedish
girls, in other words, go to clubs and dance with unknown men’ (Svenska
Dagbladet, 8 February 1997, ‘Patriarkat styr repressalier’; Svenska Dag-
bladet, 26 April 1997 ‘Hovrätt fastställde dom i syskondrama’). The repre-
sentations carefully point out that the patriarchal ‘culture’ of the

Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions, rather than religion, explains

the violence. As one article explicates:
[T]he clan and tribe-world exists in many south European countries, espe-
cially around the Mediterranean. In southern Italy, southern Spain, Greece
and North Africa, among other areas, the family is the most important thing
of all. The man decides, and his authority is strongly associated with the
women of the family. If they are seen as too sexually liberated, the man loses
his status, and the man, or the men, must take action to defend the family’s
honor. (Arbetet Nyheterna, 11 February 1997, ‘En kulturell fråga som miss-
brukas’. See also Göteborgsposten, 16 February 1998)
Rather than the usual string of experts on violence used in the media —
such as social workers, psychologists and the police — ‘immigrants’ as such
are used as informants to provide insights into the patriarchal ‘culture’ that
shapes their behavior. ‘You have to be a Muslim to know why you do a
thing like this’, the brother who stabbed his sister outside a nightclub is
cited to have said (Göteborgsposten, 5 February 1997, ‘Brodern Åtalad’. See
also Aftonbladet, 5 February 1997, ‘Åtalas för mordförsöket på sin syster’).
‘She didn’t follow an Arabic pattern of life’, explains the man who has killed
his ex-wife (Svenska Dagbladet, 10 February 1997, ‘Nytt mord på invan-
drarkvinna’ and Aftonbladet, 11 February 1997, ‘Fick inte följa islams tradi-
tion — slog ihjäl hustrun’). In attempts to find evidence about the ‘culture’
of inequality that prompts such crimes, reports from high schools and
neighborhoods rich in ‘immigrants’ appeared. As a typical example, Arbetet
Nyheterna (9 January 1997) discusses a visit to Rosengård, an ‘immigrant’
neighborhood in Malmö:
WOMEN SQUASHED IN CLASH OF CULTURES

In our culture boys have greater freedom, say immigrant girls at the
Rosengård School.
Last Monday a Turkish woman was seriously stabbed by her own brother. She
had brought disgrace upon her family by going to a dance club.
Barely a month ago a woman was killed by her brother and cousin in Umeå.
The meeting between the values of two cultures can be problematic. Not
the least for the young immigrant girls who are often torn between the strin-
gent rules of the family and the pull from the freer lifestyle of Western cul-
ture. . . .
Hebah Achichk [15 years old] has to be home at 9 p.m. If she wants to be out
longer, she must be accompanied by her older brother. If a friend of the fam-
ily saw her drinking alcohol it would burden her for the rest of her life. Pop
music and clothes are easier, but Hebah is not allowed to wear skirts that are
too short.
At the same time, I’m thankful to my parents for letting me do half of what
Swedish girls do. They want me to have an education and do not wish for me
to stay at home doing the dishes.

With patriarchal ‘culture’ as the explanatory framework, it is clear that any

‘immigrant’ man becomes a potential perpetrator and all ‘immigrant’
women their possible victims:
Incidents like those in Stockholm and Umeå could just as well happen in
Rosengård, the youths think.
Another typical example is the following interview, which appeared on the

first page of Svenska Dagbladet on 8 February 1997:
PATRIARCHY RULES REPRISALS

Nalin Baksi about family control.
Reprisals on immigrant women who break family norms are sometimes
planned by many family members, says Parliamentarian Nalin Baksi.
Inside the paper the article continues:
Young brothers are instructed to control, sometimes beat and in extreme

cases murder their sisters. The reason is that their punishment is shorter than
for adult men.
Deportation is the only way to deal with these violations.
Parliamentarian Nalin Baksi (Social Democrat) looks me right in the eyes
when she says this. She is a Kurd and Muslim but her friend Feryal Messö
Bolos, Syrian and Christian, agrees.
It was Nalin Baksi who suggested that we meet and talk about this. She hopes
that her story can help younger girls who are in the same situation. ‘To live in
two worlds is a balancing act on a slack rope and pure hell,’ says Nalin Baksi.
Naturally, murder is something extreme and very rare, but that brothers kill
sisters or that women with too strong a wish for independence are sent back
to the homeland and ‘disappear’ is a reality that Nalin Baksi and Feryal
Messö Bolos have grown up with at close quarters. ‘I don’t understand why
you are so surprised. I am surprised about why the latest cases have attracted
so much attention. This kind of thing has happened many times before,’ Nalin
Baksi says over the spinach pie we eat in the home of her Swedish friend
Anna-Kirsti Löfgren.
It goes without saying that murder of women has nothing to do with Islam or
any other religion, but it is something that exists in all cultures of the Middle
East, Nalin and Feryal claim. They give examples of cases of which they
have first hand information, but they do not want to provide details in
consideration of the families involved. At the end of the 1980s, for instance, a
Turkish man living in Rinkeby [note: a neighborhood of Stockholm well
known as an ‘immigrant’ area] was sentenced to prison for the murder of his
daughter-in-law. Nalin Baksi also mentions a young Kurdish woman, a woman
from Turkey and a Moroccan woman who were sent to their homelands at dif-
ferent occasions and never heard from again. ‘People say they are dead,’ says
Nalin Baksi . . .

Nalin Baksi thinks that the reason she has not talked about this publicly
before is that she was too close to the problems. ‘There are still things that we,
who are free, would never tell.’ Feryal Messö Bolos nods.
‘Immigrant’ informants are again used as expert testimony, and the

reader is once more instructed that gender inequality is a consequence of
‘culture’ rather than religion. Again, ‘culture’ predetermines ‘immigrants’ to
oppression and violence against women. None of the other potential
explanatory factors that would connect ‘immigrant’ gender violence with
that of ‘Swedes’ — such as social marginalization, unemployment, psycho-
logical problems, exposure to pornography and other hostile portrayals of
women, abuse of drugs and alcohol, a family history of violence, and failure
of police and social services to intervene15 — are given any elaboration.
Instead, gender equality produces a strong chasm of difference between
‘immigrants’ and ‘Swedes’. Having erased all complexity from these prac-
tices, the cause and solution appear surprisingly simple. With ‘immigrant
cultural’ baggage to blame for the problems, Swedish society is absolved as
an accomplice. ‘Swedish culture’ and the various social service institutions
of the state are thus set up as solutions to a problem that originates outside
that which is ‘Swedish’.
THE SWEDISH-HATE MUST BE COUNTERED (Aftonbladet, 25
February 2000)
‘I would never do it, I promise. But if I would rape a girl, I would choose a
Swedish girl, one with a short skirt and high heels. Swedish girls have to learn
to protect themselves. They must understand how we immigrant guys work.
How we view Swedish girls, for instance.’ (16-year-old ‘immigrant’ boy in
Hjulsta, Dagens Nyheter, 18 February 2000)
‘If a gang of immigrant guys egg each other on to attack a girl, it goes without
saying that they choose a Swedish girl. Obviously their culture plays an
important role.’ (Ercan Sahin, ‘immigrant’ from Turkey and youth therapist at
PBU in Rinkeby, Dagens Nyheter, 3 March 2000)
Initially, the ‘immigrant’ gender equality problematic was primarily pre-

sented as a ‘cultural’ difficulty of ‘immigrant’ women at the hands of ‘immi-
grant’ men. Soon, the view was added that gender violence by ‘immigrants’
constituted a rejection of and frontal attack on ‘Swedish culture’, repre-
sented by ‘Swedish’ women. ‘The murders and gross violations of young
immigrant women in Sweden are more than a tragedy for those involved’,
widely-read popular historian Herman Lindqvist writes in Aftonbladet:
Swedish society has to make demands on those who want to live in our
country. . . those that despise and reject Swedish culture and Swedish customs
should not reside in Sweden. (Aftonbladet, 15 February 1997)
In most accounts, ‘immigrants’ were no longer wholly determined by their

‘culture’ of origin, but were also strongly shaped by their socially segre-
gated life situation in Sweden. The ‘immigrant’ status of eight boys who
gang-raped a ‘Swedish’ 14-year-old girl in Rissne outside Stockholm made

great headlines in February 2000, generating a host of articles on the

attitude of ‘immigrant’ men towards ‘Swedish’ women. The view that ‘immi-
grant’ men — pained by the indignities suffered in Swedish society
and driven by patriarchal ‘cultures’ — vented their frustrations on
‘Swedish’ women produced headlines such as ‘Girls Become Objects of
Revenge’ (Dagens Nyheter, 3 March 2000) and ‘They Despise Swedish
Women’ (Dagens Nyheter, 18 February 2000).16
As before, ‘immigrants’ were used as informant experts of the ‘culture’
and life situation that prompted their actions. Often, the informants are not
given full authority to interpret their situation, and the accounts are inter-
woven with the authoritative voice of the journalist. Dagens Nyheter (12
February 2000) talks to a group of four ‘immigrant’ boys:
IT CAN HAPPEN TO THE NICEST GUY
‘Now all immigrant guys will be labeled as f***ing svartskallar [people with
black hair] that rape Swedish girls,’ says Ali. His family comes from Turkey
and lives in Rinkeby outside of Stockholm.
‘Now the racists will have something new to invoke,’ he says. ‘They have
already been here, hollering about all the immigrants who want to rape
Swedish women and who ought to be thrown out. So you have to have
brothers and friends that help you fight if someone starts mouthing off to
you.’
‘Rinkeby had just started to get a good reputation,’ Richard says. ‘But now
they talk a bunch of crap about all of us immigrants that live here.’
The difficult and exposed life situation of ‘immigrants’ in segregated ‘immi-

grant’ neighborhoods, including the threat of racist violence, is presented as
background knowledge for understanding why ‘immigrants’ are hostile to
‘Swedish’ women. Social segregation, like patriarchal ‘culture’, is presented
as strongly determining the behavior of ‘immigrant’ men. Any ‘immigrant’,
as the title of the article and the excerpt below suggest, would potentially
engage in violence against ‘Swedish’ women:
None of the four think the rape was planned.

‘It probably just happened,’ Richard says. ‘It can happen to the nicest guy, that
he participates in a gang-rape.’
The denigrating views of ‘Swedish’ women are then introduced:
It is a major crime to rape a woman, the four decide.

‘But it is not as wrong to rape a Swedish girl as raping an Arabic girl,’ Hamid
says. ‘The Swedish girl gets lots of help afterwards, and she has probably
already f***ed. But the Arab girl will have trouble with her family. For her it
is a big shame to be raped. It is important that she remains a virgin until she
gets married.’

The other three sit silent. Nobody says that it is just as horrible for all women
to be raped . . .
It was no coincidence that it was a Swedish girl that was defiled in Rissne —
that is very clear from the conversation with Ali, Hamid, Abdallah and
Richard. All four in some way look down on Swedish girls and claim that this
attitude is common among young men with parents who have immigrated to
Sweden. . .
‘It is much too easy to get a Swedish whore . . . no, girl, I mean,’ Hamid says
and his choice of words makes him crack an embarrassed grin. . . . ‘Many
immigrant guys are with Swedish girls when they are teenagers. But then
when they get married they take a real woman from their own culture who
hasn’t been with a guy. That’s what I’ll do. I don’t have much respect for
Swedish women. You can say that they are f***ed to shreds.’
Whereas the violence against ‘immigrant’ women who became too

‘Swedish’ represents an indirect rejection of ‘Swedish culture’, ‘immigrants’
are now portrayed as actively seeking out ‘Swedish’ women to take
vengeance on a society that has failed them. This behavior, and the rejec-
tion of gender equality that underlies it, is increasingly represented as
reversed racism and Swedish-hate (svenskhat). As reversed racism, the ‘cul-
ture’ of gender inequality is no longer a problem that primarily victimizes
‘immigrant’ or ‘Swedish’ women, but rather becomes an assault on
‘Swedishness’ itself. Dagens Nyheter (18 February 2000) talks to four young
‘Swedish’ and ‘immigrant’ women:
All four notice the reversed racism, the racism that leads to some immigrants
viewing Swedes as lesser beings.
‘F***ing svenne [approx. ‘Swedie’], that’s what they say,’ Jessica says.
That’s the equivalence of blatte [approx. ‘nigger’]. And it is Swedish girls that
are affected the most. Because they are whores as well. Svenne-whores . . .
The Minister of Youth and Integration, Ulrica Messing (Social Democrat)

intervenes with a debate article in Aftonbladet (25 February 2000) entitled
‘The Swedish-Hate Must be Countered’. Like many other representations,
hers make clear connections between patriarchal ‘immigrant’ views of
‘Swedish’ women expressed in Rissne and a rejection of ‘Swedish culture’:
The reports from Rissne had placed in focus a serious attitude question that
we have not had the courage to debate earlier. It is the gravely prejudiced and
sometimes aggressively hostile attitudes that can be found among some
youths with a foreign background against native-born Swedes and against
Swedish culture . . .
Hostile and prejudiced attitudes and actions are not just expressed in one
direction — from native-born Swedes against people with a foreign back-
ground — but are also found in reverse order and between different groups
in our society. If we are to remain credible in the fight against racism and
xenophobia, it is just as important for us to dare to speak openly about all hos-
tility and all prejudices that exist in Sweden.

These dominant representations of the ‘immigrant culture’ of gender

inequality were not without contestation. Editorials, debate articles and
letters to the editor argued that the attitudes of ‘immigrant’ boys arose in
the suburbs of the major cities rather than in the ‘culture’ of their parents.
In these accounts, the boys know very little about the ‘culture’ of their
parents’ homeland: ‘they are creating a new, conservative, woman-op-
pressing tradition-less culture’ (MP Nalin Pekgul, in Arbetet Nyheterna,
March 2000). Other accounts attempt to place patriarchy in the foreground
and create a common framework for understanding oppression of women
while taking the different circumstances of people living in Sweden into
account (e.g. Elisabeth Abiri and Helena Lindholm Schulz, in
Göteborgsposten, 19 February 1997). Virtually none of the accounts, how-
ever, question the ‘Swede/immigrant’ dichotomy upon which the
representations rest.
Conclusion
The central aim of this article was to analyze a compelling paradox, that the
production of one unifying identity of the state of Sweden, gender equality,
has helped create divisions within the population of that state. In the 1990s,
Sweden came to understand itself as the gender equality champion inter-
nationally and increasingly represented itself as an ‘ideal’, having come the
‘farthest’, in empowering women politically and economically. However,
this gender equality discourse, which on the one hand is fundamentally con-
cerned with equality between men and women, has also become implicated
in a new inequality, namely the categorization of the population of Sweden
into ‘Swedes’ and ‘immigrants’ and the hierarchical ordering of these cate-
gories. The article has shown that simultaneous with Sweden becoming the
‘gender equal state’ vis-à-vis other states in the early- to mid-1990s, repre-
sentations of gender unequal ‘immigrants’ (in contrast to gender-equal
‘Swedes’) became prominent in the press.
Developments in Sweden should give us pause, as the meanings and prac-
tices of gender equality have become fraught by a series of additional
contradictions that may put in question this seemingly progressive agenda
as well as the international equality identity that accompanies it. First, the
conceptualization and subsequent attempted elimination of one form of
oppression, that of women, has helped first define and then stigmatize the
entire category of ‘immigrants’, including ‘immigrant’ women. Ironically,
these representations help reproduce the alleged crime of ‘immigrant’ men,
namely the assumption of ‘immigrant’ women’s subordination and treat-
ment of them as passive objects rather than acting subjects.17
In addition, by the very end of the 1990s, what had originally emerged as
a concern about ‘immigrant’ women was no longer so clearly about women
at all. At the beginning of the decade, the problematic of ‘immigrant’
women shifted away from explanations that emphasized the ‘labor market’
and the ‘work place’ towards ‘culture’ and ‘cultural difference’ as an inter-

pretative framework. ‘Immigrant’ women first became seen as victims of

their ‘culture of origin’ at the hands of ‘immigrant’ men. ‘Swedish culture’
and the institutions of the state were thus set up as the solution to a gender
equality problem whose roots were to be found outside that which is
‘Swedish’. Increasingly, however, ‘Swedish’ women were also seen as vic-
tims of ‘immigrant’ men. Representations of ‘immigrant’ men who —
socialized in gender-unequal ‘cultures’ and frustrated by their marginaliza-
tion in Sweden — vented their anger on ‘Swedish’ women abounded. In
these representations, women merely became the site on which competing
views of ‘culture’ and ‘multi-culturalism’ were debated and negotiated.
Perhaps most problematically, since the retention of one’s ‘culture’ is
important to the official ‘multi-cultural’ Sweden, the representations of the
status of women as a ‘cultural’ issue may actually fuel the problems they
claim to want to resolve.
Notes
I am particularly grateful for the helpful comments and feedback of Bud Duvall,
Kathryn Sikkink, Petrice Flowers, the Gender Network of the MacArthur
Consortium and the two anonymous Cooperation and Conflict reviewers on earlier
drafts of this article.
1. Initially, six goals were prioritized for the Swedish presidency, then narrowed
down to ‘three Es’, — Enlargement, Employment and Environment — gender
equality dropped out as a specific policy goal. As a result, gender equality became
approached in the spirit of mainstreaming — it was to permeate all other policy
areas and in this way remain an overall priority.
2. The Swedish term for gender equality, jämställdhet (parity), did not initially
refer to gender parity per se. However, whereas jämlikhet (equality) generally is
used to speak about class, jämställdhet has become strongly associated with gender.
In this article, ‘gender equality’ is approached as a terrain of meanings and a
constellation of values and practices, rather than as a strictly defined and opera-
tionalized term. As the article is already overburdened by citation marks, and since
the meaning of ‘gender equality’ is not investigated but bracketed, I refer to jäm-
ställdhet as gender equality rather than ‘gender equality’.
3. For particularly insightful discussions of the metatheoretical debates within
constructivist IR, see Campbell (1998) ‘Epilogue’ and Price and Reus-Smit (1998).
See also Kratochwil and Ruggie (1986), Kratochwil (1988), Walker (1989).
Recognizing the difficulties, I deploy the simple binary of conventional and critical
constructivists. More sophisticated divisions can be made, including Campbell’s dis-
tinction of post-structuralism from critical constructivism. However, for present
purposes, this simple rendering will do.
4. UN sources: official statements on Swedish policy towards the UN, as well as
Swedish reports to CEDAW and to the six UN World Conferences on Women
1975–2000. EU sources: the various information sheets, newsletters and web pages,
such as Rapport från EU:s regeringkonferens 1–16 (Report from EU’s Ministerial
Conference, no. 1–16), eu2001.se, Faktablad om EU-samarbetet (Fact Sheet on the
EU cooperation, serial), EU-rapport (serial) and a number of non-serial publica-
tions. I also use the formal publications on Swedish EU policy and various speeches
by Swedish cabinet members in the EU.

5. The share of foreign-born people who have immigrated to Sweden is

presently about 10% of the population. If we expand the definition to also include
those who have at least one parent that immigrated to Sweden (i.e. ‘second genera-
tion immigrants’), then the present ratio of ‘immigrants’ is around 25% (Demker
and Malmström, 1999: 116).
6. In the mid-1960s, the term ‘immigrant’ officially replaced the former ‘for-
eigner’. In the mid-1970s, public policy was elaborated for ‘immigrants’ and ‘minori-
ties’ under a common label: ‘immigrants and minorities’. The ‘immigrants and
minorities’ policy thus combined ‘minorities’ (identified as Jews, gypsies, Saamis,
Estonians, Tornedal Finns and a few other groups whose history in Sweden was as
long as that of non-‘minorities’) with people who had recently immigrated to
Sweden and their offspring for an unspecified number of generations. The assump-
tion was that all ‘immigrants’ would eventually become ‘minorities’, an assumption
with very little support in the long history of immigration to Sweden. In the mid-
1980s, the authorities realized that ‘immigrants’ did not fit the international ‘minor-
ity’ definition, and once again the two categories were separated. In the early 1990s,
it was suggested that ‘immigrant’ encompass persons who were of non-EC citizen-
ship and who had lived in Sweden for less than 5 years. The definition was, then, in
essence the same as the ‘foreigner’ of the 1960s, as one cannot be naturalized in less
than 5 years.
7. For a discussion of gender and Danish state identity, see Richey (2001) and
Petersen (2001).
8. The three previous mentions of gender equality or women’s issues in the gov-
ernment’s annual foreign policy declarations took place in 1975 in relation to the
first UN World Conference on Women; in 1988, as Sweden became a member of the
UN Commission on the Status of Women; and in 1991, again in relation to work in
the UN.
9. For a discussion of the Swedish foreign policy role as a critic, see e.g.
Wahlbäck (1973), Jerneck (1983), Stenelo (1984), Jönsson and Petersson (1985) and
Bjereld (1992).
10. For instance, the phrase introduces Sweden — the Equal Way, a gender equal-
ity publication put out in five languages by the Swedish Institute (the public
authority charged with spreading knowledge about Swedish social and cultural life
abroad), as well as Government Addresses, public reports, state web pages and the
publications for the EU presidency.
11. The GDI measures the ‘average achievement of a country in basic human
capabilities’, i.e. longevity, knowledge and access to basic resources, taking ‘note of
inequality in achievement between women and men’ (UNDP, 1995: 73).
12. The GEM ‘examines whether women and men are able to actively participate
in economic and political life and take part in decision-making’. (UNDP, 1995: 73).
13. In fact, immigration has ebbed and flowed during the post-war period, with
1970 and 1994 the years of largest immigration since the years after the Second
World War. In the years immediately after the war, 122,000 Nordic refugees, 45,000
Germans and 30,000 people from the Baltic region came to Sweden, though many
of them did not remain permanently. However, until the mid-1960s, research on
‘immigrants’ was virtually non-existent. The press, similarly, did not pay much atten-
tion to the issue.
14. See, for instance, Bergman and Swedin (1986: 82).
15. In the cases of Umeå, Stockholm and Malmö discussed above, the women had
all filed reports of abuse with the police, and in one of the cases a restraining order
was issued against the perpetrator.
16. To be sure, these dominant representations were contested by less prominent

accounts in which ‘immigrants’ and ‘Swedes’ were not dichotomized and in which
common causes of gang rape were discussed (such as the role of pornography, group
pressure and the failure of adults to intervene).
17. Brune (2000) made similar findings in her analysis of media representations
of Muslims in the spring of 1997.
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ANN TOWNS is in the Department of Political Science (and Feminist

Studies) at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include
international relations, with particular reference to conceptual history,
state identities and the international production of gender equality
institutions of the state.
Address: Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota,
1414 Social Sciences, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
[email: atowns@polisci.umn.edu]

Ann Towns - Gender Equal State of Sweden

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Ann Towns - Gender Equal State of Sweden

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Paradoxes of (In)Equality

Something is Rotten in the Gender Equal

‘In Sweden, we have come far by international comparison; in fact, we have

On 1 January 2001, Sweden assumed the presidency of the Council of

Cooperation and Conflict: Journal of the Nordic International Studies Association

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launched during the Swedish presidency of the EU’, a photo exhibit of

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that jämställdhet — gender

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the emergence of Sweden as the ‘gender-equal state’. The third section is

State Identities and Ethnicity: Studying Sweden as a Gender-

[A]s a result of their profoundly different modes of structuring (one operat-

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set of characteristics, ‘rendered in essentialist ways as a variable that can be

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publications as central to this analysis. In addition to reading these publica-

‘Immigrants’ and ‘Swedes’ as Ethnic Categories

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predominant understandings and practices in society, they are also impor-

The Production of Sweden as a Gender-Equal State

In the early to mid-1990s, Sweden, like the other Nordic countries,

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which largely centered on gender equality. At a historical juncture in the

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Gender Equality and the Construction of ‘Immigrants’

Post-Second World War ‘Immigrant’ Workers

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‘Yesterday Another Immigrant Woman Was

During the 1990s, conceptions of the ‘multi-cultural Sweden’ had a major

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Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions, rather than religion, explains

WOMEN SQUASHED IN CLASH OF CULTURES

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With patriarchal ‘culture’ as the explanatory framework, it is clear that any

Another typical example is the following interview, which appeared on the

PATRIARCHY RULES REPRISALS

Inside the paper the article continues:

Young brothers are instructed to control, sometimes beat and in extreme

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‘Immigrant’ informants are again used as expert testimony, and the

Initially, the ‘immigrant’ gender equality problematic was primarily pre-

In most accounts, ‘immigrants’ were no longer wholly determined by their

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great headlines in February 2000, generating a host of articles on the

IT CAN HAPPEN TO THE NICEST GUY

The difficult and exposed life situation of ‘immigrants’ in segregated ‘immi-

None of the four think the rape was planned.

The denigrating views of ‘Swedish’ women are then introduced:

It is a major crime to rape a woman, the four decide.

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Whereas the violence against ‘immigrant’ women who became too

The Minister of Youth and Integration, Ulrica Messing (Social Democrat)

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These dominant representations of the ‘immigrant culture’ of gender

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pretative framework. ‘Immigrant’ women first became seen as victims of

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5. The share of foreign-born people who have immigrated to Sweden is

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Ashley, Richard (1987) ‘Living on Borderlines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War’, in