Swedish
women revolutionize
Sweden's economy and society
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
July 15, 2005
LONDON - "Women hold up half the
sky", said Mao Zedong, although by and large in communist
China women had a tough time playing second fiddle to the
men. Here in Sweden women do almost hold up half the sky.
If foreign minister Anna Lindh had not been murdered last
year there might well be a female prime minister in
power. For a decade half the cabinet have been women and
women occupy nearly fifty percent of the seats in
parliament.
It shows. When the government dares
to suggest that it is thinking about raising taxes in
this most highly taxed of nations to pay for better
health and social services the country takes the news
quietly. When the government decides to cut back on its
military spending, likewise. The country, long socially
progressive, has now copper bottomed its welfare state by
putting woman in the driving seat.
According to the UN's Human
Development Report, the Swedes have had more success in
producing equality between the sexes than any other
country on earth. Come to Sweden and unravel the mystery
of how such an economy, riddled with expensive props for
encouraging women to work - free child care, year long
maternity leave, flexible working hours - out does year
after year nearly every other European economy and goes
neck to neck with Britain's growth rate and Tony Blair's
much touted, but seriously misunderstood, Anglo-Saxon
model.
In fact Sweden is swamped by
visitors from 10 Downing Street avid to absorb the
lessons Sweden has to give. The so-called Anglo-Saxon
model, virulent in its opposition to the corporatist,
Franco-German social model, is, not so stealthily, using
its ever growing capitalist-produced wealth to imbibe an
even more socialistic model - the truly dynamic
Scandinavian one. The attraction for Tony Blair is that
private enterprise is at least as free as in Britain,
women are at the center of working life and while
Scandinavian social security payments are generous they
all come with an obligation to find work or retrain.
There is always a route out of poverty in Sweden but to
take it and receive the handsome social security payments
recipients have to undertake training for new careers.
American observers who think Britain is moving into their
social camp have got Tony Blair quite wrong. But then so
have much of the German and French ruling
elites.
Well, do come to Sweden! Here I am,
during a glorious, cloudless summer with the ethereal
Nordic light pluming through the dense pine forests and
across the luminous lakes, as I take some time to be
alone with my Swedish family. But even in paradise
surrounded by Swedish women, I have to say I note a lot
of falling short.
Women, as elsewhere in the world,
have a longer working week than men. While it is true
that men do more housework than anywhere else in the
world, they still do ten hours a week less than women do.
Swedish men are rather good at dealing with babies - men
on the street, pushing a pram, are a common sight.
Nevertheless, women devote twice as much time to
childcare. Few men take up the government's offer to pay
them to take a year out whilst they look after the
newborn. When it comes to laundry even the most
emancipated men fall short, spending a mere 20 minutes a
week on this task.
Yes, historically there has been
male-female tension in the air in Sweden. Strindberg has
it in his plays, "The Father" and "Miss Julia". And
cinematographer Ingmar Bergman has spent a long and
fruitful life chronicling every pain filled tearing of
the fabric of relationships across the great sexual
divide. And now this year a feminist party has been
launched, led by the former leader of the Communist party
and including such luminaries as the ex wife of Prime
Minister Goran Persson. However, most of the women I know
here have little truck with contemporary, fundamentalist
feminism.
And young men too are getting
worried. A firm majority of students studying for
prestigious professions such as doctors, veterinarians
and lawyers are women. Women work harder, study more
diligently and since the way is now open they are racing
ahead. Only in business leadership, with its more
conservative institutions, do women still seriously lag
behind.
But the torments of Strindberg and
Bergman have been outgrown. Over the last fifty years
Swedish women have won most of their battles but have
managed to retain their feminine charm. They are softer
and gentler than say their French, German or American
sisters, less demonstratively assertive, more reserved
and simply quietly sure of themselves.
And young Swedish women, my
daughter not least, can still outshine their European and
North American contemporaries when it comes to mixing
brains with beauty.
Copyright © 2005 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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