(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
In today's Sweden, all feminists are from the Social Democrats Prime Minister Göran Persson to the Left Party's Gudrun Schyman. Even the People's Party (similarly the Left) has recently published a book on its interpretation of feminism.
- They try to give feminism a liberal origin. They think it attracts voters. Something they may desperately need to not fall out of the Riksdag, says Ulrika Westerlund with a little laugh.
Together with colleague Josefin Brink, she cleans the table in Bang's editorial office and puts out coffee cups. bang has recently celebrated its tenth anniversary and the entrance is almost impassable due to brown cardboard boxes full of leaves. There is the anniversary issue, which gives a taste of the magazine's "greatest hits" through ten years, and the last ordinary issue before that again – about gender and class, illustrated by a smiling Queen Silvia during the opening of the Øresund Bridge. Silvia wears a safety helmet and a bouquet of flowers in her arms. The image of her is cut like a star, mounted on a clear, red background. An indication that feminism still does not mean the same for everyone, not even in Sweden.
- We are happy with that number. We believe that it addresses something important. No one is discussing economics and feminism these days. There is a gap and a non-dialogue between the establishment's gender equality feminist and independent feminists, like us. The Fittstim girls were based on the private, and that's ok. It is necessary for young girls to discover themselves as feminists. But the lack of a debate about gender and public finances is frustrating, Brink and Westerlund say.
So very much debate did not get bangs class number either. Only the like-minded people of the Left Party wanted to discuss. Although one should not budge from such debates. For the left side has not always had an equally well-defined relationship with the sizes gender and class.
Maid and class travel
As we pass Queen Silvia, for example, we meet three women who have gone through so-called class trips. One has broken with his parents' working class background to become an actor. Another is a refugee from Iran with upper-class background who now works as a pharmacist's assistant. A third has a father who wants her to become a veterinarian, while she prefers to work on the "floor". Common to all of them is that they seek their class affiliation with the father, while the mothers are more invisible.
The purpose of the article is to show how class is a trait that men can play in the public space, but which is subcommunicated in women. The purpose of the theme number is to question how much it really helps that women gain leadership positions, as long as they are a separate and subclass in each social class as long as they are financially and health-wise.
- A feminist perspective does not exclude all other perspectives. Neither the class perspective, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Even if you belong to the white middle class, it is not impossible to feel solidarity and identification with others. When you acknowledge gender as a category, all that is needed is to acknowledge the importance of other categories, the editors say.
One current issue they are upset about in the present is the so-called "maid debate", about domestic help for professional women who can afford it. It started in 1994 when a female economist suggested deduction for the purchase of household services. The argument was that such a right of deduction would result in increased employment, increased equality and less black work. The criticism against this was that on the contrary, it would help low-educated women to do housework for highly educated women, while men escaped the burden of equality on the home front.
In October last year, the Social Democrats opposed the proposal, but not from an equality perspective. Rather to avoid the bureaucracy and the problematic of supporting certain industries.
- The "girl debate" shows that there is still a need for a critical feminist discussion. It is disillusioning when this is the level of the economic debate around gender equality, Brink and Westerlund say.
We can make demands
bang is named after the writer pseudonym of Barbro Alving, one of Sweden's most famous female journalists. The magazine saw the light of day in 1991, a period that must be called a drought period in Scandinavian feminism.
Neither Westerlund nor Brink were involved when it started, as a wall newspaper, produced by the Working Group for Female Students (AKS). The original editors are all reasonably successful today in both academia and the media.
The magazine comes four times a year and has evolved from being a perhaps primarily academically oriented journal with a political dimension, to today reaching about 4000 subscribers aged 20 to 60. bang also has subscribers in Norway.
In terms of circulation, bang is a bit behind the more well-known Wordfront and Etc, but it is not at all bad for a magazine of the socially debating kind. Especially not considering that small publications do not get the same distribution opportunities as large ones. The editorial staff describes the magazine distribution in Sweden as a catch 22; You must have a print run of 10 000 to be distributed to the magazine sales. But how do you grow when you are not made visible?
Still, the edition, along with some cultural support, has given the magazine advice to hire three editors on poor pay, and to give writers and other contributors a symbolic fee for the effort.
- This means that we have been able to professionalize the magazine journalistically, Brink believes.
- We have more reports and interviews and more contributors.
And interest in the feminist debate, she thinks, is growing, and not least young feminists like Nina Björk and the even younger Fittstim girls are examples.
- The greater the welfare, the more people get involved in extra-parliamentary issues. This creates a climate that also provides fertile ground for radical feminism. For no matter how much we may criticize the effectiveness of the gender equality measures that have been initiated, we are at least in a situation where we can make demands. The problems are formulated. We must live with the fact that the debate easily becomes superficial in the major media. Feminism is not just for educated feminists. We do what we can to raise the questions we think are important, Brink and Westerlund say.
