Feminist Organising in ‘Feminist’ States: A Qualitative Study of the Shift to Feminist Governance in Sweden and its Impact on Feminist Civil Society Organisations

Abstract: Sweden was one of the first countries in the world to declare that it had a feminist government, following years of high rankings on global gender equality indexes and a relatively stable image of Sweden as a gender equality leader. However, the declaration has been accompanied by scholarly inquiry defying claims connected to Swedish feminist governance, often challenging its transformative capacity, and bringing to question who is included in its vision. This study contributes to such inquiries by exploring how the shift to feminist governance in Sweden has impacted civil society, more specifically the work of feminist civil society organisations working against gendered violence. Through a theoretical framework of critical feminist influences, the study hypothesises that feminist governance should not be taken for granted as a definite solution to issues related to gender equality and could hinder further feminist organising, this is investigated through interviews with informants at different organisations. A thematic analysis of these interviews demonstrate that organisations are struggling regarding issues like dependency on funding which opens them up for vulnerability of political influence and risks compromising more radical potentials of their work due to time-consuming bureaucratic procedures. The findings furthermore present that organisations see how both feminism and gendered violence are often used for political and monetary gains, with little or damaging result, much due to misconceptualisations of violence and simplistic explanatory models. In conclusion, this thesis finds that the conditions organisations work under, their perceptions of the work on and state of gendered violence and accounts related to their target groups, signify a need to scrutinise the state of gender equality in Sweden.