Förkastade rum

Abstract: This essay is based on the notion that feminism is neglected in the public sphere and examines the possibilities and limits for feministic political change in the Malmö-Lund region in Sweden. By doing so, the limits and the actual expression of feministic politics in the area are inquired. It also questions how feminists react to the spatial division private/public and if there are other spaces, mental or physical, that would enable feministic political change. The results find that feminists suffer in the public sphere. Their ideas are often being diminished in meetings and organizations and the media reduces matters to be narrow issues about biological women. The public discourse individualizes politics, which undermines the feminist structural thinking. Therefore there is a feminist demand for different spaces; Spaces for recovery and where it is possible to speak one’s mind without being diminished. By using the theoretical concepts of counterpublics and free space this essay finds that feministic political actions find no use in the separation between the public and private. For that reason new political spaces are required, and examples of these spaces are found in art, separatist organizations and in gender studies institutions.