Gender Equality in the Swedish Welfare State

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present a framework for understanding the distinct Swedish model of gender equality that is both comprehensive and progressive. The gender equality policy of the Swedish state, closely intertwined with social democratic welfare state ideology, has developed over the last 40 years based on a structural understanding of equality and has covered most policy fields. The model obviously has been successful, as measured in global gender gap indexes and the like (World Economic Forum, The global gender gap index 20062011). Today, women in Sweden have a high level of labour market participation and education, and Sweden has instituted policies for the reconciliation of work and family life, for public support for families with small children, for women’s bodily and physical integrity, and for the fight against domestic violence and prostitution. Here we will give an overview of gender equality as an area of special interest for state policy, first formulated in the 1970s, and try to show how this area of policy has been reflected in explicit and extensive regulations promoting gender equality. We will show how law has been used both as a means of guaranteeing non-discrimination and as a means of introducing active measures. And we will also provide an analysis of how gender equality regulation, produced in dialogue with the welfare state ideology, has developed a strong and comprehensive structural base for achieving gender equality. In addition however, this article will critically review Sweden’s self-image of “a good and equality-producing state”. It will argue that in fact, the Swedish state has shown a lack of ambition to fully challenge the gendered segregation of the labour market, to change the uneven distribution of economic and political power in many sectors of society, and to fulfil the political goal of shared parental