Article

How Gender Equal Is Social Change

50(1) 28–43, 2020
Sweden? An Analysis © CSD 2020
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of the Shift in Focus DOI: 10.1177/0049085719901067
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under Neoliberalism

Linda Lane1
Birgitta Jordansson1

Sweden’s proven ability to enact family-friendly policies to support its gender

equality ambitions has made it an exemplar of gender equality to emulate among
developing countries. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that while Swedish
gender equality has become an important part of Swedish identity, paradoxically,
the foundations upon which this identity was built has gradually been eroded––
Sweden has shifted from a welfare state with collective solutions and inclusiveness
towards one of neoliberal governmental rationalities where individual autonomy
and freedom of choice are seen as means of achieving gender equality. This new
direction has implications for how gender equality policy is formulated. Using
Bacchi’s ‘What is the problem approach?’ this article traces the Swedish gender
equality discourse from the 1960s to the present while at every stage interrogating
how equality was problematised and what solutions were offered.

Keywords
Gender equality, state identity, Sweden, women, work

Introduction
Historically, Swedish feminist gender equality policy has embodied ideals that
support the eradication of gender discrimination in all aspects of societal life
including democratic, legal and economic equality. Having formally achieved the
first two––democratic and legal equality, and far ahead of most countries in

1
University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Corresponding author
Linda Lane, Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg, Box 720, SE405 30 Gothenburg.
Email linda.lane@socwork.gu.se
 How Gender Equal Is Sweden? An Analysis of the Shift in Focus / 29

achieving the third––economic equality, Nordic countries have emerged as

beacons for gender equality worthy of emulation (World Bank, 2019). Sweden’s
membership in the European Union (EU) in 1995 also presented the perfect
opportunity to capitalise on its expertise on gender equality. The culmination of
Sweden’s proven ability to enact family-friendly policies to support its gender
equality ambitions made it a valuable partner in the EU where gender equality as
an ideology and political ambition was an emerging field. In this context, Sweden
became an authoritative voice around issues that would shortly gain central
importance for the entire EU. Paradoxically, during the last decade, endeavours to
build a gender equal society on universal grounds have been challenged through
measures that lay the ground for social divisions related to class and ethnicity.

Aim and Purpose

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that while Swedish gender equality has
become an important part of Swedish identity, paradoxically, the foundations
upon which this identity was built has gradually been replaced. Sweden has
shifted from being a welfare state, with its collective solutions and inclusiveness,
towards one dominated with neoliberal governmental rationalities where
individual autonomy, initiative freedom of choice is seen as a means of achieving
equality. In this article, we trace the gender equality discourse from the 1960s to
the present while at every stage interrogating how equality was problematised and
what solutions were offered. Moreover, arguing that experiences and effects of
political efforts to achieve equality are impregnated with notions of ‘the other’,
the article discusses why an analysis that includes class, gender and ethnicity is
both theoretically and politically necessary for understanding the specific and
contextual conditions under which equality discourses arose.
Specifically, an analysis of the Swedish Tax Deduction for Domestic Services,
(RUT) a reform enacted in 2007 that permits qualified households to purchase
cleaning, maintenance and laundry services at a tax-subsidised rate, explores
whether the reform exacerbated social divisions related to class, gender and
citizenship and the role it played in the politics of differentiation. Moreover, we
want to understand why a reform, which focusses primarily on female, unpaid
household and care work, has made a historic ‘return journey’ in recent years.
Where the defunct system of an unregulated labour market for poor, working-
class women as domestic servants in middle-class households during the early
twentieth century are now re-packaged for use in today’s labour market as a site
for employment and entrepreneurship. Domestic services have been re-packaged,
priced and marketed by the Swedish state as a solution to gender equality
problems, but who is doing the cleaning and caring, and for whom, and at what
price? The questions we pose take those performing those tasks as the point of
departure to ask, who are ‘we’ in Swedish gender equality policy. Moreover, what
impact does the suggested answers to these questions offer for Sweden’s identity
as the most gender equal country in the world?
30 / Linda Lane and Birgitta Jordansson Social Change 50(1)

Method
Our analyses are informed by Bacchi’s (1999) ‘What’s the problem?’ approach. In
this approach, how a problem is constructed, not ‘the problem’ as such, is central
to the analysis. This implies that ‘the problem’ is always defined by someone in a
certain way, which affects what we see, how we describe it and what questions we
ask. This entails asking how demands for domestic services were presented as a
policy problem and how could such demands be integrated in the gender equality,
identity discourse. What problems were supposed to be solved by the
implementation of a tax deduction for domestic services? How and why was the
dominant perspective established, and what was left unproblematised or omitted?
Bacchi’s approach recognises that problems are not given, and they must be
constructed and made visible. Through such problematising activities, certain
phenomena, domains or subjects are made governable, that is, the target of
governing practices which operate throughout society. According to Bacchi,
every problematisation or construction of problems is intimately related to the
construction of solutions: ‘… every postulated “solution” has built into it a
particular representation of what the problem is…’ (Bacchi, 1999, p. 21). The
starting-point of this approach is an awareness that there are multiple ways of
framing gender inequality as a policy problem and, thus, there are multiple
visions of gender equality embedded in problem representations (Lombardo et
al., 2009; Verloo 2007). With Bacchi’s approach, it is possible to expose how
problematisations––and solutions––have changed during time. For similar
purposes, a frame on gender equality can be defined as a configuration of positions
on various dimensions of diagnosis and prognosis, including positions on roles, on
location, on norms, on causality and mechanisms, on gender and intersectionality
(Lombardo et al., 2009, p. 11).

Gender Equality on the Swedish Political Agenda

In the formative gender equality policy process from the late 1960s until the early
1990s when RUT was first proposed, the problem of gender inequality in the
labour market was understood mainly in terms of men’s and women’s unequal
sharing of unpaid house-work, and then the focus was on women’s entry into the
labour market per se. In this formulation, the gendered and discriminatory
practices of the labour market were left out of the policy process, and gender
inequality in the labour market was understood as primarily as a response to
inequality in the home (Kvist & Overud, 2015).
To understand this problematisation or rather a lack thereof, a glance into
the nation’s recent history may prove helpful. An underpinning factor was the
state-centric governmental rationality of the Swedish post-war welfare model.
In state-centric, welfare states, based on pillars of centralism and universalism,
social intervention, and consensus, there is a rationale for the state to intervene,
to redistribute resources and to regulate life opportunities of individuals through
various socio-political interventions. In such states, the formula consists of making
 How Gender Equal Is Sweden? An Analysis of the Shift in Focus / 31

the state the primary agent that forms, guides and controls events based on uniform
policies (Rose, 1996). Herein lies the Swedish welfare state model, typified by
Esping-Andersen, with its origins in consensus concerning the paths to be taken,
economic, social and political, and the performance of a balancing act where the
extremes of capitalism were mitigated through redistribution of resources via a
well-developed tax system and welfare reforms (Esping-Andersen, 1990).
Gradually since the 1980s and perhaps at an increased pace since the 1990s
recession, the Swedish model has shifted towards more neoliberal governmental
rationalities (Larsson et al., 2012). With this shift, the notion of active citizenship
has become part of the mainstream policy discourse in a number of different
arenas––for instance in the areas of the labour market. In several policy domains,
political reforms have been implemented, which gradually turned welfare from
being a collective social right into being a commodity. In this respect, being a
citizen-subject has increasingly come to mean acting as a consumer or a producer
in a welfare market. In this new model individual autonomy, initiative freedom of
choice vis-à-vis the principle of state intervention is seen as a means of achieving
equality and the redistribution of societal resources (Ryner, 2002).
Consequences of the decline of the welfare services were redirected towards
the household (Calleman, 2007; Szebehely, 2005). Research has emphasised cut-
backs in the provision of quality elderly care and childcare services, and the need
to fill the gaps between care and work schedules has led to an increased demand
for private domestic services. Before the implementation of RUT, this void was
filled by informal black market domestic services (Gavanas, 2006; Lister &
Anttonen, 2007; Platzer, 2007). With the marketisation of care and the transfer
of more care responsibilities back to the home, paid domestic work re-emerged
in Swedish homes. At the same time, domestic work re-emerged on the political
agenda through the intense debate aimed at the proposed RUT reform (Calleman,
2007; Pålsson & Norrman, 1994; Platzer, 2007).
The tax reform, later enacted as RUT, was first proposed in 1993 (Pålsson &
Norrman, 1994). However, it was not until 2007, after nearly 15 years of debate,
that the Swedish Parliament enacted RUT. How was the reform problematised
as a gender equality measure? What were the underlying influences that made
this reform worthwhile? As suggested earlier, governments are not created in a
vacuum; they are influenced by their historical and intellectual legacies. Therefore,
to understand how RUT could be conceptualised as the solution to such diverse
social problems as career women’s work–life balance, unemployment among
immigrants and a lack of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial spirit in Sweden we
undertake a short historical review of Swedish gender equality.

Gender Equality as a Welfare Task

Supported by welfare state arrangements identified by Esping-Anderson (1990)
as embedded in social democratic regimes, Nordic countries have been successful
in providing men and women equal access to health, sickness and unemployment
insurance, parental leave and access to affordable child and elderly care. All of
32 / Linda Lane and Birgitta Jordansson Social Change 50(1)

these encourage and support women’s participation in the labour market with
the goal of achieving gender equality through employment and economic
independence for both sexes.
The goals of gender equality in Sweden and the other Nordic countries
were framed as a kind of nationally encapsulated journey, a linear process of
evolvement where everyone together continuously strives towards the goal of
equality between women and men vis-á-vis power and resources, participation
and influence. In this portrayal of gradual, harmonious, evolvement, gender
equality is represented as a series of measurable progressive steps, with an actual
end station: a gender equal democracy (Skjeie & Tiegen, 2005; Svensson, 2011).
The 1960s and 1970s were largely characterised by demands for women’s
rights to the labour market and the right to equal pay once there (Lindgren, 1982;
Lundqvist, 2014; Waldemarsson, 2000). It was doing this period that a political
agenda with gender equality as the goal was formulated. Olof Palme, then
Prime Minister and leader of the Social Democratic Party (SAP), declared that
the foundations for gender equality laid in working life and that women should
be guaranteed the right to work. The vision was a society shaped by a division
of labour based on equality between men and women (Hirdman, 2014). His
implicit meaning was that men and women were equally responsible for unpaid
work. A Gender Equality Delegation was appointed and gender equality issues
were institutionalised and politicised. Important in this context were women’s
organisations and feminist social activism with a pronounced basis in socialism
and the demands for both class and gender equality (Cf. Moberg, 2003/1961;
Myrdal & Klein, 1957).
Furthermore, gender segregation in the labour market was also a problem. This
was by no means new; at the beginning of the Swedish industrialisation process,
this segregation was already established. Expressions such as ‘light’ and ‘heavy’
industry also signalled, female- and male-dominated industrial production, and the
wage situation was subsequently set with lower wages in the women-dominated,
‘light’ industry. Even when women and men were under the same roof, segregation
could be maintained on the basis of different tasks, but also with different salaries
for the same work (Lane, 2004). As the public sector expanded, gender segregation
in the labour market increased as more women entered public sector jobs and men
remained in traditional industrial positions. The Social Democratic government
introduced a ‘new’ family policy, with the dual-earner family as an official goal.
The reforms promoted gender equality and women’s autonomy. Maternal leave was
replaced by parental leave, and new principles for entitlements were introduced.
Hereafter, both parents became entitled to parental leave, and women’s economic
autonomy was assured through increased labour market participation. By the
1980s, the call for men to participate in unpaid housework was no longer implicit.
This is reflected in the governmental proposition, ‘On Gender Equality for the
1990s’ that envisioned a future society where unequal division of labour and
power between the sexes were abolished and where there existed virtually equal
gender distribution in all the areas of society. Women and men would have the
same rights, obligations and opportunities in all essential areas of life. Including
access to jobs that provide a livelihood, a shared responsibility for children and
 How Gender Equal Is Sweden? An Analysis of the Shift in Focus / 33

housework, and where both genders could be equally involved in societal affairs.
The most important instruments for achieving a proportionate distribution of
resources in society were such actions that aimed to achieve a fairer distribution
between women and men of paid and unpaid work (Prop, 1987/88: 105 p. 20). To
support women and men in these endeavours, successive Social Democratic Party
governments extended policies already in place, the so-called ‘family friendly’
policies such as affordable childcare and parental insurance to nudge women and
men in the desirable direction. To encourage the ‘new fatherhood’ and nudge
fathers towards taking more responsibility for their children, the so-called ‘daddy-
month’ was introduced in 1995 and extended to two months in 2001 (Plantin,
2001). From 2000 onwards, the right to public childcare was introduced: initially
only for working parents but gradually including all children under the age of five
(Hobson, 2002; Lane, et al., 2006).
The manner in which gender equality issues were raised during this period
can be interpreted as transcending class, with a clear collectivist universalist
approach. From a labour movement perspective, it was observed that women via
labour market participation and paid employment had become integrated into the
class struggle. Gender equality and class equality went hand in hand (Hirdman,
2014). It is during this formative period that gender equality became embedded in
the Swedish national self-image (Rabo, 1997).
Despite proclamations about the importance of shared responsibility for paid
and unpaid work in equality policy rhetoric, conflicts between paid and unpaid
work remained under-problematised and as Skjeie and Tiegen (2005) pointed out,
the implicit understanding was that Sweden was on the way to gender equality.
Perhaps this outcome was to be expected as the focus of gender equality policy,
which was now entirely focussed on the labour market and economic independence.
Focus on labour market participation that advocated a two-provider system,
in which women and men would both engage in paid work, implicitly implied
but did not problematise the division of unpaid work in the household. In the
labour market, a male-centred norm was established, according to which women
should work like men did (Borchorst & Siim, 2008). However, as women entered
the labour market, the time committed to unpaid work in the household raised
questions concerning who would do the care work. The reality of second-shifts
for women, one in paid work and one in unpaid work was labelled by Hochschild
(1997) as a ‘stalled gender revolution’. Women joined men in the labour market,
but men did not join women in unpaid household work. In Sweden, the issue
did not raise political interest, as specific family-friendly policies were expected
to erode cultural norms that made care to be working women’s responsibility,
regardless of whether they worked part-time or full-time.
The idea of Sweden as the ultimate woman-friendly welfare state has been
criticised for its failure to consider differences between women. According to
critics, this notion is based upon a normative assumption of women, where gender
equality predominantly means equality for white, heterosexual, working mothers.
This conceptualisation of gender equality, they argue, makes invisible other grounds
for discrimination (de los Reyes et al., 2006; Honkanen, 2008; Kvist & Peterson,
2010; Mulinari, 2008). The social democratic policymaking process with a strong
34 / Linda Lane and Birgitta Jordansson Social Change 50(1)

focus on consensus building among political actors across the entire political
spectra had a clear impact on formulating a gender equality policy. Even when
most ambitious and radical, the high value placed on political consensus created
pressures that changed the Swedish gender discourse from a political issue to
something ‘everyone’ could agree on. Gender equality as a concept that expressed
no power relations and was disembodied with no sexual undertones; therefore, the
sexes would only be placed side by side as two abstract beings, symbols or ideal
types (Florin & Nilsson, 1999; Törnqvist, 2008), a conceptualisation that masked
many underlying conflicts. Thus, inequalities between and within categories
or groups of women were generalised and reinforced. Analysed as categorical
inequality, old stratifications between and within groups remained alive and
co-existed alongside newly arising ones (Tilly, 1998). An overarching political
issue, gender equality, is facing a new set of structural problems after 1990. The
static-state, with its collective solutions, shifted to individualism in an advanced
liberal society (Rose, 1996). Politics and the political agenda are taking new
directions, but the Swedish self-image of itself as a successful example of gender
equality worthy of emulating remains the same. Even as the very foundations
for that image––the visionary social democratic welfare model of equality and
universalism is being dismantled along with the welfare policies that it supported.

The Emergence of a New Path

Shifts in the Swedish model towards more neoliberal governmental rationalities
that had been gradually taking place since the 1980s became more apparent
(Larsson et al., 2012). With these changes, the notion of active citizenship has
become part of the mainstream policy discourse in a number of different arenas––
for instance, in the areas of the labour market. In several policy domains, political
reforms have been implemented which gradually turned welfare from being a
collective social right into being a commodity. A market for previously collective
organised services were now developing with private enterprises capitalising on
the possibilities to ‘sell’ healthcare, elderly care and education to a budding
market where individual choice steered supply and demand under the watchful
eye of the state.
Consequences of the retrenchment of welfare services redirected focus on the
household and the gender division of labour. Research has emphasised the cut-
backs in the provision of quality elderly care and childcare services and the need
to fill gaps between care and work schedules led to an increased demand for
private domestic services for those who could afford them and to stress, over work
and a second-shift for those who could not (Calleman, 2007; Szebehely, 2005).
Before the implementation of RUT, the focus of discussion later in this text, the
void was filled by informal black market domestic services (Gavanas, 2006;
Lister and Anttonen, 2007; Platzer, 2007). With the marketisation of care and
the transfer of more care responsibilities back into the home, paid domestic work
re-emerged in Swedish homes. At the same time, domestic work was brought
 How Gender Equal Is Sweden? An Analysis of the Shift in Focus / 35

firmly back onto the political agenda through the intense debate aimed at the RUT
reform (Calleman, 2007; Pålsson & Norrman, 1994’ Platzer, 2007).
During this period, gender equality remained an established and prioritised
policy area in Sweden. Proposals and commissioned White Papers during this
period tended to problematise differences in power and influence between men
and women (Prop., 1994, 1995: 147; Prop., 1987: 88:105). Although a power
perspective analysis revealed that gender inequality was a problem at the structural
level, increasingly more individualised solutions were mandated (Hirdman, 2014).
From a policy perspective that previously focussed on working conditions such
as gender pay gap, gender segregation and gender discrimination, increasingly
rhetoric with labour market organisations, employers and trade unions began to
focus on individual woman’s opportunities to pursue careers and concepts such as
work–life balance and ‘life puzzle’ (Lane, 2011). The issue of gender inequality
was translated into a problem for individuals and perhaps primarily for individual
women. This shift into a new set of problematisations went hand-in-hand with a
neoliberal turn in the advanced liberal state.
Thus, the Swedish gender equality arena was increasingly left open to a variety
of interpretations of gender equality. Paradoxically, although there was a national
consensus concerning the desirability of gender equality, there was a lack of
consensus about how gender equality should be defined. Depending on political
and/or feminist views, definitions of the concept were rooted in completely
different understandings of relationship between the sexes. These differences
could be expressed as conceptions that advocated a distinct power perspective on
the one hand and another view that emphasised biological differences on the other
(Hirdman, 2014; Melby et al., 2009). The paradox suggests that when concepts such
as gender equality is universally advocated, but where policy objectives and the
means by which objectives are to be achieved is contested or undefined, the need
arises for new forms of policymaking processes to address the question of how the
concept, that is gender equality, should be defined (Martinsson et al., 2016).
The lack of an explicit definition is manifested in the findings of two gender
equality policy studies (SOU, 2005:66; SOU, 2015:86). Both studies revealed
that changes in the labour market were generating increased class and gender
differences in terms of employment and working conditions. However, in the last
ten years, no concrete solutions have been put forth to address the issue. How can
we address class and gender if the implicit understanding is that these issues have
already been resolved? Instead, the emphasis was on everyone’s equal rights, and
equality aims were directed towards providing women and men with equal access
to power to shape their individual lives.
The failure to address increasing class and gender differentiation in favour of
individualised solutions was a response to shifts in governmentality. An analysis
based on Bacchi explains how in the new individualised political landscape
individuals define problems and are expected to take responsibility for finding
solutions to them. With collective solutions no longer available, each individual
must use their energy and resources to reach individually identified goals. Under
problematised in this scenario is the reality of power and resource differences.
36 / Linda Lane and Birgitta Jordansson Social Change 50(1)

Those with power can use it to define which problems are of interest and worthwhile
to include on political agendas. Thus, even non-problematised problems become
impregnated with inequalities such as class, gender or ethnicity; now under the
new governmentality, they are reduced to individual problems to be solved using
individual attributes, qualifications and efforts. Translated into the everyday lives
of Swedish women, we observe that demands for improved career opportunities
for middle-class women did not solve the basic problems faced by working-class
women. Rather, two different problem complexes were revealed, both of which
were at risk of becoming invisible in Swedish neoliberal gender equality rhetoric
where class and other categories of inequality were deemed archaic.
By analysing Swedish gender equality before and after the introduction of
RUT, we probe whether these gender equality ideas correspond to those Sweden
is desirous of exporting. We are not claiming that Sweden does not value gender
equality or that the implemented policies do not mitigate blatant forms of gender
inequality observed elsewhere. Our aim is to start a discussion concerning what
gender equality is, who should be included and under what conditions. Only
then can other countries evaluate the credibility of the Swedish model of gender
equality as worthy of emulating.

Tax Deduction for Domestic Services (RUT)

In an international perspective the introduction of a tax deductible for domestic
services in Sweden is neither new nor novel. A number of other European countries
have introduced state supported programmes for paid household work (van
Hooren, 2018). The difference that makes the Swedish case appropriate for study
is that none of these countries claims to be the most gender equal in the world. As
members of the EU, they are instead considered as possible export markets for the
Swedish brand of gender equality.
Simply stated, the aims of RUT were these: to move untaxed domestic services
organised in an informal black market into a regular financial system through
incentives for service providers; to enable women and men to increase their time
in the labour market by providing specialised domestic and care services at a
subsidised price; to increase the labour market participation rates of people with
low-education; and finally, to encourage the possibility for men and women to
combine family and work-life on equal terms (Bill, 2006, 2007: 94, p. 1). Presented
in this manner, the reform offered a number of benefits and changes that were not
explicitly aimed at gender equality. Instead the focus was on the black market for
domestic services which was seen as an obstacle to an expanding service sector
where the providers of these untaxed services worked under unsafe conditions.
RUT was implemented in 2007. Since implementation, the scope of the bill has
been amended, but the basic premise, to enable the purchase of domestic services
at a subsidised rate, remains the same. Tasks covered by RUT included cleaning,
care of clothing and home textiles, cooking and a number of other services
connected to home and garden for which qualifying household were eligible for
a tax reduction.
 How Gender Equal Is Sweden? An Analysis of the Shift in Focus / 37

When welfare is commodified by replacing universal state provision of services

with a market economy, the consequences can be detrimental to the quality of life
of already vulnerable groups. The implementation of the RUT reform at the same
time as an emphasis on labour market flexibility produced a growing workforce
of part-time and casual and contract labour at the bottom of the employment pool.
Findings from previous research show that the implementation of tax reduction in
combination with the commodification domestic services created a new category
of racialised female migrant workers at high risk of exploitation, discrimination
and that faced precarious working conditions and low pay (Anderson, 2007;
Jordansson & Lane, 2018; Leppänen & Dahlberg, 2012).
Was RUT a success? Much depends on whom you ask. According to Nyberg
(2012), RUT services have possibly increased economic gender equality
marginally, but not because women who buy these services have increased their
employment, but because the number of employed in the formal domestic services
sector has increased. RUT-services have not contributed to a more gender-equal
distribution of household and care work in the sense that they further men’s
efforts in this area. On the contrary, in families where RUT-services are used, the
demand on men’s participation in household work most likely diminishes. It is
often claimed that one reason for buying domestic services is to limit the arguing
about who should do what in the household. This measure fits very well into a
model of conditional employment for women. That a limited number of women
with relatively high incomes but limited time are able to buy domestic services
has nothing to do with a weakening of the gender order, but with increased income
and class differences between women and in general.
Although the explicit purpose of Swedish gender equality and family policy is
to create equal opportunities for women and men through an improved work and
family balance, responsibility for childcare and housework remains largely the
responsibility of women (Björnberg & Kollind, 2005). This regardless of whether
gender equality reforms were about enabling women and men to reconcile wage
work with homework by means of family policy reforms, supporting women as
entrepreneurs or strengthening their positions in the labour market, making it
possible for some women to ‘buy themselves free’ from the unpaid homework.
The solution advocated was the use of state funds to contribute to a solution to
what had come to be termed, a work–life balance conflict. It became increasingly
clear that it was now about the individual, about ‘kitchen table discussions’
between women and men in the sanctity of their homes. Once the reform was
established and enforced for a few years, it had become a ‘truth’ (Jordansson &
Lane, 2018).
An analysis of the before and after process of RUT in Sweden reveals two
important points that require further discussion. First, the implementation of RUT
and problems it intended to solve laid bare the failure of the Swedish welfare
state interventions to change cultural norms. Family friendly benefits did not
make the majority of men more inclined to take on the primary responsibility for
child rearing and housework. Although some movement was observed in using
parental leave, men’s participation in child rearing and other household work has
been very slow. However, none of the proposed solutions raised this as an issue.
38 / Linda Lane and Birgitta Jordansson Social Change 50(1)

When the reform was implemented, Anders Borg, the Swedish Finance Minister,
conceded this point in a speech in the Swedish Parliament:

A household deduction thus provides an opportunity for more women with longer
education and more qualified positions to work more. [O]f course, I wish that we could
instead have a gender equality debate where we got men in these households to take
more responsibility… I would also think it was very good. But that discussion has now
been going on in Sweden for 20, 30, 40, 50, maybe even 100 years, without any major
effects. (Borg, 2007)

With this statement, Borg confirmed that intentions to demand men increase their
responsibility for unpaid housework was no longer on the political agenda.
Instead, RUT provided an opportunity for men to continue to resist caring
activities with support from the state. Future considerations concerning the gender
division of household labour would be based on an individual partners’ ability to
negotiate for change within households; the alternative is the purchase of domestic
services in the market.
Skjeie and Teigen’s idea about the linear gender equality is completely
interrupted in this discussion. The resistance to change in men’s roles in the family
is part of a larger picture of asymmetry of a gender role change. There has long
been more stigma for men adopting women’s roles than vice versa. Women get
more approval for integrating male professions or trades than men do for entering
female fields. Gender equality is for women! The difference is that before RUT
we existed under the illusion that gender equality in the labour market and the
household for both was possible even if it was far away (Skjeie & Teigen, 2005).
RUT confirmed that we are on a completely different path.

Emergence of a New Feminism

The implementation of RUT represents a new direction in the Swedish gender
equality discourse where welfare state retrenchment, the marketisation of care,
merges with discourses of labour market, gender equality policies and migration.
It also reveals a new direction in governance as the development of a formal
sanctioned market for personal services could only arise with direct support from
the state (Esping-Andersson, 1999; Morel & Carbonnier, 2015; Orloff, 2009).
From a liberal feminist perspective, the gender gap is a symbol of underlying
structures producing different opportunities for men and women. Within the
framework of a neoliberal culture, however, gendered patterns have also come to
be interpreted as merely the result of individual choice. However, what is lacking
is a clear account for how individual choice is structured by inequalities such as
class or ethnicity. In an attempt to explain how the contemporary convergence
between neoliberalism and feminism involves the production of a new kind of
feminism, that is a eviscerating classic, mainstream liberal feminism. Rottenberg
(2014) argues that by adopting key liberal terms, such as equality, opportunity and
free choice, while displacing and replacing their content, this recuperated feminism
forges a feminist subject who is not only individualised but entrepreneurial in
 How Gender Equal Is Sweden? An Analysis of the Shift in Focus / 39

the sense that she is oriented towards optimising her resources through incessant
calculation, personal initiative and innovation (pp. 421–422). She further argues
that neoliberal feminism is predominantly concerned with stating a feminist
subject who epitomises ‘self-responsibility’, and who no longer demands anything
from the state or the government, or even from men as a group; there is no longer
any attempt to confront the tension between liberal individualism, equality and
those social pressures that potentially obstruct the realisation of ‘true’ equality.
The creation of the neoliberal feminist subject thus reinforces the assumption that
the struggle for equality has, in some sense, already occurred, been successful and
is, consequently, a thing of the past (Rottenberg, 2014).
With the implementation of RUT, this emerging neoliberal feminism garnered
support as Sweden embraced the model of competitive individualism for women.
Moreover, by denying the legitimacy of gender and other categories of difference
as important solutions advocated by the neoliberal feminist demeans the
importance of care work, leaving millions of poor women without their support
(Eisenstein in Rottenberg, 2014). With the implementation of RUT, Sweden
can now be seen as formally participating in ‘global care chains’, where cheap
migrant labour is demanded by medium- and high-income households aspiring to
combine employment and family life (Gavanas, 2006; Hochschild & Ehrenreich,
2003; Kvist and Peterson, 2014).
The arguments against RUT were largely formulated by debaters and
researchers from the Left and class, gender and ethnicity became central to
the argument. Remaining true to the aims of gender equality policy in ways
reminiscent of politicised arguments in the 1970s, critics argued that RUT was
mainly aimed at ethnic Swedish middle- and upper-class families, while those
who did the work themselves were largely made up of foreign-born working-class
women, further exploiting an already vulnerable category of women. RUT would
thus lead to polarisation between women and to increased inequality. A far better
alternative should be to invest in measures that stimulated men to take increased
responsibility for unpaid work at home.
However, regardless of which groups were apostrophised, the reasoning is linked
to the gender equality goal of equal opportunities for economic independence.
Moreover, equality should be achieved without disrupting the status quo between
women from different classes and ethnicities in society. Highly educated women
could take their seats in boardrooms while working women of colour could take
their places in those women’s living rooms with cleaning mops in their hands.
The implementation of the RUT has not only reinvigorated the public discourse
about continued gender inequality in Sweden, but they it has also underscored that
this emergent feminism is predicated on the erasure of issues that concern an
overwhelming majority of women in Sweden and across the globe. The move from
a discourse of equal rights and social justice to ‘individualism’ was predicated on
the erasure or exclusion of the vast majority of women. Put differently, the gender
equality discourse as advocated in reforms, such as RUT, does not and cannot take
into account the reality of the vast majority of Swedish women.
The RUT reform was a state initiative that rested on completely different
premises than those that laid the foundation for the Swedish welfare state and
40 / Linda Lane and Birgitta Jordansson Social Change 50(1)

informed both spiritually and materially the gender equality Sweden now wants
to export to others. As previously pointed out, and with the ideological shift
that has taken place, we mean that class has now disappeared from the policy
of equality. The imprecise definition of what gender equality as a concept and
vision is, the manner in which we define equal rights as general goals, combined
with an individualisation of politics has opened a space for discussing our initial
question––who are ‘we’ in Swedish equality policy?
The question is whether Sweden, with the implementation of RUT, is moving
towards full equal gender equality. The answer depends on how the gender equality
concept is defined. Of course, when countries are compared using quantitative
measures and indices, Sweden as also the other Nordic countries are ranked as
more gender equal than most other parts of the world. But as we have tried to
show, this is just one part of the story. At the macro-level of national comparisons,
on-going battles and the day-to-day negotiations of who cares for children and the
elderly and who performs housework gets lost in the statistics. This should be the
starting point for evaluating reforms such as RUT. As we have shown RUT has
promoted the entrance of marginalised women and men into the labour market but
different premises. It is clear that focus was on work as a solution to inequality
and exclusion. However, the reforms rest on the stereotyped images of men and
women, where class and ethnicity constructions are based on racialised grounds.
It is also a discourse in which men and their privileged positions in households
were not questioned. But for whom is gender equality promoted when one woman
performing household and care work is replaced by a poorer, immigrant variation
of herself? It is a policy that certainly recognises gendered structures, but as in
its constitutive discourse consolidates and cements an image of an intersectional
sense unequal policy in the welfare state of Sweden.
In many parts of the world, the implementation of RUT in Sweden and the
ensuing debate will be appraised as a storm in a teacup, an intellectual battle about
nothing of interest. We argue that this is far from the truth. In a globalised world,
what happens in a small well-ordered political democracy, socially progressive
and economic successful country on Europe’s periphery is of importance quite
simply because if gender equality cannot be attained here, then what is the
prognosis for the rest of the world? Our task has been to peel back the onion layers
of the Swedish gender equality policy and the domestic debates surrounding it to
reveal how one seemingly innocuous reform became the fuel that reignited the
Swedish gender equality debate.
Our analyses suggest that there is good cause to re-evaluate Sweden’s self-
identity as the world’s most equal country. Not to take heed is to continue to bury
our heads in the sand about central issues of who will perform care work, or why
are some people considered more suitable for that work than others? Therefore, it
is only reasonable that we return to our original question: who are the ‘we’ in the
Swedish gender equality debate. Do we mean all members of society or is gender
equality only for some privileged groups while ‘others’ are excluded? Importantly
when are we going to demand that men take responsibility for unpaid care and
household work? As long as the self-proclaimed most equal country in the world
does not make these demands, why then should we emulate it?
 How Gender Equal Is Sweden? An Analysis of the Shift in Focus / 41

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication
of this article.

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