Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0677-6833
Date Available
4-23-2025
Year of Publication
2025
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College
Arts and Sciences
Department/School/Program
Gender and Women's Studies
Faculty
Dr.Srimati Basu
Faculty
Dr.Jenn Hunt
Abstract
Sweden has been lifted as a prominent example of a successful feminist policy enactor, and has built credibility as a humanitarian actor both domestically and transnationally. Simultaneously, intersectionally marginalized groups have attested to patterns of social exclusion and feelings of political disenfranchisement in Swedish society, calling into question Sweden’s reputation for feminist exceptionalism. This dissertation project centers on unpacking this dynamic by examining how Swedish gender equality policymaking institutions design and implement feminist policy, and how those efforts are interpreted and contested by intersectionally marginalized groups of Afro-Swedish feminist activists. Drawing from a mixed-methods framework that includes feminist ethnography (interviews, participant observation, focus groups) with public sector gender administrators and Afro-Swedish feminist activists and politicians, survey research of gender administrators, and critical discourse analysis of policy documents, the dissertation examines whose knowledge and lived experiences are accounted for in Swedish gender equality policymaking practices, and by extension whose perspectives are rendered invisible. The empirical data demonstrates that there are structural barriers inherent to Swedish policymaking institutions that prevents the political insights from both gender administrators and Afro-Swedish feminist activists from being fully considered. The dissertation argues that future Swedish gender equality policymaking practices should be reoriented to explicitly consider the perspectives of both institutional insiders, and the viewpoints of intersectionally marginalized stakeholders in future policy processes
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2025.14
Funding Information
University of Kentucky Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Dissertation Fellowship, academic year 2023-24
Recommended Citation
Bullock, Lukas, "Alternative Visions of Swedish State Feminism" (2025). Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies. 11.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gws_etds/11
Included in
Other Political Science Commons, Scandinavian Studies Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Social Justice Commons
