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Introduction to the Lecture Series
No full textfeminists@law is pleased to launch the first in a series of online guest lectures that trace the (dis)continuities between the debate on immaterial labour and value which originated in Italy in the 1970s and the current debate on precarity/precariousness which has more recently emerged as a central concern of transnational feminist scholarship and activism (see 2007 special issue of Feminist Review). Reflecting on this intellectual/political trajectory acquires particular relevance today, with the crisis of social reproduction advancing in Europe as elsewhere. We hope that this series will generate further discussion in this journal and beyond
Swedish Gender Equality for Trafficked Women? Radical Official Remedies and Ethnic Otherness
Get PDFThe article provides an overview of the official Swedish attitude towards trafficking in persons for sexual purposes, places this view in an international context, and also critically analyzes problems that arise when the Swedish objective of establishing gender equality both nationally and internationally is confronted with the issue of women who have been trafficked to Sweden. The analysis covers the standpoint of the Swedish parliament expressed through legislation and other official documents regarding both criminal and migration law. It demonstrates that the Swedish position regarding trafficking is closely bound up with its understanding of prostitution which is conceptualized as an extreme expression of gender inequality. It moves beyond the polarized international positions of abolishing prostitution or normalizing it by addressing men’s demand for paid sex by the criminalization of the purchasing of sexual services, since demand for paid sex is regarded as the basis of both prostitution and trafficking. The main conclusion is that the aspiration for gender equality seems first to include Swedes in the Swedish context and secondly other ethnicities within their own native countries. In contrast, women trafficked to Sweden are constructed as “others” who do not fit into either of these categories. The emphasis in the context of women trafficked to Sweden is on combating transnational, organized crime, and in consequence gender equality is no longer a priority: the situation of these women perceived as non-Swedes or ethnically ‘other’ is therefore regarded as some other state’s problem
A Gender Perspective on Flexicurity and the Swedish Employment Protection Act
Get PDFFull employment is an important policy objective at both the Swedish national and European Union levels. The Swedish Employment Protection Act will help to achieve this goal by giving employees the protection of permanent employment. The European Union sees flexicurity as one means to reach that objective. This article shows how women are at risk of being excluded from the opportunity of gaining employment security to a larger extent than men. Such circumstances exist in both the Swedish labour law and the EU flexicurity strategy. The norms that form the basis of the Swedish Employment Protection Act are based on stability of the employment relationship between employer and employee. Flexicurity represents flexibility in the relationship between employers and employees to a greater extent. In the Swedish Employment Protection Act and in flexicurity, workers' competences are essential to their job and employment security. Neither the Swedish Employment Protection Act nor flexicurity take women's specific life circumstances into account when it comes to designing job and employment security for workers. The lack of gender analysis in the construction and formulation of workers' job and employment security may lead to a disadvantage particularly for women
In Defence of Experience
No full textThis paper studies our philosophical understanding of experience in order to question the current political and theoretical dismissal of women's experiential accounts in feminist theory. The focus is on Joan Scott's critique of experience, but the philosophical issues motivating the discussion go beyond Scott's work and concern the future of feminist theory and politics more generally. I ask what it means for feminist theory to redefine experience as a linguistic event the way Scott suggests. I attempt to demonstrate that the consequences that she draws form such a theoretical move are both philosophically and politically problematic. A critical study of the evidence of experience does not have to imply metaphysical or epistemological foundationalism as Scott claims, but on the contrary, such a study is indispensable for challenging them. It is my contention we must hold on to experience as an important resource for contesting sexist discourses and oppressive conceptual schemas
Introduction: Diminishing Returns? Feminist Engagements with the Return to "the Commons"
Get PDFRecently, there has been a resurgence in political theory and political philosophy addressing the concept of “the commons”. Some of the most popularly cited references to the idea can be found in the work of Slavoj Žižek (2009) and Hardt and Negri (2009). The past century has also seen vast and varied critical feminist engagements with historically changing concepts of communism and “the commons”. Struggles for universal suffrage, critiques of universality, denouncements of the hollowing out of the welfare state as a result of neoliberalisation, and challenges to the concept of the human, are all examples of a rich and diverse feminist tradition of engagement with the concept of “the commons”. Given the popular return to the idea of the commons, what more does feminist analysis have to give to this conversation? The following papers arise from a workshop held in March 2011, hosted by the Kent Centre for Law, Gender, and Sexuality and Kent Law School, to explore this question
Gender Equality in the Swedish Welfare State
Get PDFSweden represents utopia for many women’s activists around the world. The article tries to explain the policies that created the vision of a women-friendly welfare state. Global gender gap indexes have placed Sweden in the top five for many years. The success is measured in a high level of labour market participation and education, instituted policies for the reconciliation of work and family life and women’s bodily and physical integrity. Even though many feminists do not wish to see any dark stains on the glorified picture of Sweden as a gender equal society, a critical examination of remaining gender-biased practices such as the uneven distribution of economic and political power and the gendered segregation of the labour market is also be presented. Another critical aspect is the exclusionary effects of the Swedish gender equality policies. Despite its critical stance the article defends a large part of the strong and comprehensive structural base for achieving gender equality that has become a role-model for many feminists
The Polish Catholic Church and the Regulation of IVF in Poland: Polarised Political Discourses and the Battle over ‘Proper’ Reproduction
Get PDFThis article illustrates the legislative battle for the regulation of IVF in Poland between the years 2007-2011. It examines the proposed drafts and focuses on the influence of the Catholic Church on those drafts. It also scrutinises the impact of this influence on gender stereotypes as well as the exclusion of religious “others”. When the law becomes strongly influenced by traditional religion whose values are identified with national values, many otherised groups become erased from the legislative equation: infertile couples, non-Catholics, single and lesbian women, as well as dissenting voices within the Church. While IVF is criticised, the ground for this criticism is far from the feminist concern for women and freeing them from the social expectations of motherhood
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