Feminism and intersectionality in Swedish Geography

Abstract

This report takes as its point of departure the 1989 review of ‘Women’s Studies in Scandinavian Geography’ and attempts to outline the contours of feminist and intersectional thought within geographical research in Sweden in the past three decades. Based on an insider-outsider perspective of an immigrant academic worker in a Swedish geography department, it identifies four thematic sectors within which Swedish geographers have adopted a feminist analytical lens – time and labour geography, gendered navigations of space, geographies of the south, and immigration and integration. The report provides an overview of the major works within each of these themes. I thereafter argue that the past decades have witnessed a distinct turn towards intersectionality within Swedish geography and that issues of class, race, and gender have come together in the work of Swedish feminist geographers. I conclude with a short description of the intersectional-feminist work being undertaken by early-career (mostly women) geographers and the future trajectories they indicate.