Nina Bjork: The Prime Minister does not mean change

For the first time in our country’s history, we have a female prime minister. Thus, the meaning of being a woman in Sweden has changed: from now on, it can mean being prime minister. Now all the girls who have grown up know that this is possible. So of course it matters. But the interesting thing is that it doesn’t matter at all except that it has happened now.

In 1906, the Society for the Rights of Women in Political Voting wrote in a letter to the members of the First Chamber of the Riksdag that women were “undoubtedly different from men in many respects” and that “society especially needs the effort of mercy, economy, and practical reason” that women must nominate. She gained influence in politics.

It is a concrete expression of the dream many feminists have dreamed of throughout history: women are the different women, and feminine values ​​are subversive. In 1941, early ecologist Eileen Wagner wrote in “The Alarm” that feminism cannot function in the present patriarchal system, but that “its task is to find a point outside of it, from which the imbalance that has been disturbed can be brought about.” can be restored. A change of regime, a “change of the pole” was necessary – for the sake of peace and for the sake of the earth. And it was the women, with their own history and experience, who would implement this.

Magdalena Anderson is It is undeniable that she is a woman, but she is not such a revolutionary subject. By chance, she became prime minister a few days before Black Friday, the big shopping day we imported from the US, and three months after the last report from the UN Climate Panel. The two events speak against each other. Where one says “Buy!” The other says “Emissions must be reduced!” Where one says “business as usual,” the other says instead, in old Wägner’s words, “pole change.” Magdalena Anderson speaks the first way. In the upcoming autumn budget, the government wants to implement tax cuts totaling SEK 10.5 billion. in a Article in Dagens Nyheter (1/9) Anderson justified the proposal by saying that it was a way to “accelerate the economy after the downturn during the pandemic.” “Low-income families consume more when they have more in their wallets,” she said. The focus is clear.

So the position of prime minister is just a woman in the position of prime minister. It is not synonymous with change. We got to skip the old dream. But maybe that’s the point, too! As I once wrote a long time ago, in my first book: “Being a woman shouldn’t be a pleasant thing—it should be something unpleasant.”

Of course, this is a victory for the commodity of dreams that liberals and socialists have always shared, the individual should not be restricted by his gender. Thus, perhaps we can focus on the important thing: the content of the policy.

Read more:

Cultural debate. Pioneers of Democracy – Paving the Way for a Prime Minister

Ewa Steinberg: Historic day – but not what Anderson had hoped