A feminist event

The Feminist Nordic Forum in Sweden in 2014 was dominated by a modernist, radical state feminism, which has been of importance for how Swedish gender-equality norms have emerged. One of the main ambitions of the forum was to ‘formulate requirements and specific proposals for the Nordic governments and politicians linked to future gender policy’. The state was thereby given considerable importance in the feminist struggle for, and in promoting, gender equality. This importance was also emphasised through the attendance of all the Nordic countries’ ministers for gender equality at the final plenary session of the Forum.

One consequence of this set-up was that Solveig Horne, representing the Norwegian culturally racist party Fremskrittspartiet, was invited. Not only is she famous for her racist political work, but she also has expressed and been criticised for trans- as well as homophobic views. When she gave her speech during the final session, many people in the audience got up and left the hall in protest. At this moment a critique of Swedish and Nordic state feminism became very clear. When a state or government is racist and transphobic, as in Norway, collaboration with it means collaboration with those who openly and intentionally take part in political processes that are racialising and, thereby, othering people, as well as threatening LGBQT-bodies. It is a sort of violence that also denaturalises the state as a unit for all people living in the country. It creates an outside inside (see Butler, 1997; Trinh, 2011), in this case in Norway.

The critique of Horne and the Nordic Forum was predictable. Although the work for gender equality is recognised as important and has been partly successful, activists and researchers have critiqued not only Swedish welfare state policies and their modernist, linear gender-equality politics, but also how the gender-equality norm is performed in everyday life, working life, the judicial system and the care system. Gender-equality policies and norms have been criticised for becoming neoliberal and thereby depoliticising the gender-equality issue and privileging middle-class women's needs.