Tracing the Possibilities and Limitations of Intersectionality Within the Institutional Space of Swedish State Feminism

The Swedish state has long prided itself on its promotion of gender equality policy both domestically and internationally. As of 2015, the incorporation of an intersectional analytical perspective has been actively encouraged in the Swedish state’s approaches towards gender equality policy implementation. This paper seeks to consider the contours of the institutional space that exists for intersectionality to influence the Swedish gender equality policy machine. The data that informs the analysis is drawn from critical discourse analysis of government documents, and ethnographic fieldwork that sustained dialogue with Swedish gender equality administrators and Afro-Swedish feminists. Importantly, I consider how the epistemic perspectives of these groups, who occupy different positions on the gender equality policy spectrum, experience their positionalities as Sweden strives towards the inclusion of an intersectional approach in advancing gender equality policy. I argue that while the efforts to integrate intersectional approaches within the fabric of Swedish feminist statecraft are generally sincere, there are significant blindspots both discursively in government texts, and as identified by my interlocutors that limit the ability for intersectionality to make a defining impact on gender equality policy in Sweden. Thematically, the paper will highlight institutional roadblocks related to how the category of race is rendered invisible in institutional descriptions of the Swedish populace, the constraints that gender equality administrators feel in their attempts to incorporate intersectional approaches in their day to day work, and the frustrations experienced by some groups of grassroots Afro-Swedish feminists as they fight for the state to account for their lived experiences in contemporary and future iterations of gender equality policy. The conclusions of this paper have significant broader implications considering Sweden's prominent global positioning as a trailblazing state feminist actor, the mainstreaming of intersectionality within forms of governance cross-nationally, and the increasing scholarly attention paid to Afropean feminisms.