The Collateral Damage of Policy Reform: Low-Income Women Retirees, State Feminism, and the Pension System in Sweden

Abstract

In 2014, the Swedish government declared itself the first feminist government in the world. Indeed, the country has been successful in promoting gender equality, yet many retired women, particularly in rural areas, live on an income below the EU poverty line. Based on analysis of Sweden’s pension system, the country’s commitment to gender equality, and interviews with low-income women pensioners in rural Sweden, this article explores why some women end up living in poverty in later life. The article demonstrates how the Swedish pension reform of the 1990s has generated a structural lag; today’s older women have lived during times that were radically different from the world nowadays, yet their pensions are based on forward-looking ideals. Consequently, today’s older women have become “collateral damage” (Bauman 2011) of securing a new form of pension system, and seemingly also neglected in the state’s promise of ensuring gender equality.