Ett svenskt bakslag. Kontextskapande i diskussioner om Susan Faludis Backlash

Abstract

In the 1990s, the publication of Susan Faludi’s Backlash. The Undeclared War Against American Women provoked discussions amongst literary critics in Sweden. Particularly feminist and Women’s Studies communities embraced the book’s thesis and probed whether Swedish women had experienced a backlash similar to the one revealed and conceptualised by Faludi. The aim of this article is to study the ways in which these communities used Backlash to interpret the political context in Sweden. A key player in the discussions of Backlash and in promoting the idea of a Swedish backlash was a newly established political network called Stödstrumporna (The Support Stockings). The network was initiated by a number of well-known Swedish feminists and as a reaction to the outcome of the general election in 1991, in which the representation of women in the Parliament decreased. In addition, recent national statistics had shown that the income gap between men and women had widened during the 1980’s. Stödstrumporna interpreted both of these events as examples of a broader backlash against Swedish women. My supposition is that the labelling of specific contexts as examples of backlash can be understood as a kind of context making. Through an intersectional analysis, this article inquires to what extent the naming of contexts produces ideas of nation and gender. In Historical Studies, context has been used as a way to conceptualise how historical events are products of the time and place in which they occur. Without disputing this view of context, this article argues that context to a large extent is a narrative produced by contemporary actors who have a vested interest in presenting a context, which promotes their own positions and agendas.