The Chilean women’s movement has a long history of challenging state power. The role women played in the opposition against Augusto Pinochet’s authoritarian regime has fascinated researchers. There also seems to be a consensus, whereby the contemporary movement is considered to be divided. Yet, recent developments in Chile have seen a resurgence of women’s activism that has not been studied. The need for re-mobilization points to the idea that women’s concerns and needs have not been adequately addressed in the past, despite their strong presence in civil society. This study explores how women have experienced social action in the Chilean women’s movement, through narrative analysis. Analysing own voices accounts of collective action provided insight into how women organize in Chile; the origins of divisions present in the contemporary women’s movement; important differences and parallels with the women’s movement that opposed the dictatorship; and the presence of vertical structures in Chilean society. In focusing on the experiences of women who were active in the opposition to the dictatorship, as well as the largely untapped voices of women active in the contemporary movement, this project will contribute to future research on similar subjects.

The modern-day phenomenon house-squatting is typically performed by social movements. Social movements can be assumed to be multifaceted and straggly. The individuals meet different needs and incentives. They find inspiration from circumstances in everyday life, as well as globally, the focus lies on information/communication rather than distribution of material resources. This thesis aims to map the individual as well as the collective attributes among the participants in the women’s house-squatting in Umeå 1983, using a theoretical framework representing social movement characteristics. The results show that the political and social aims to some extent outweighed the symbolic participation. Inspiration predominantly stems from everyday circumstances but is often related to the global ditto. Information and communication play a prominent role, although material resources should not be rejected entirely. In addition, it can be concluded that the participants show contradictory behaviors, because of the movement’s multifaceted and straggly composition.

In the fall of 2017, the #metoo movement began on social media to encourage victims of sexual harassment to speak up and show the magnitude of the problem, especially violence committed by men against women. The message of #metoo went viral and developed into a significant topic on gender equality. It became a global trend in countries such as Sweden, France and various other countries, which caused a storm of users to share their stories with the help of the hashtag metoo on their social media platforms. The motivation behind the chosen area of study is to comprehend opinions on the movement. In order to get a different perspective on the women’s movement the focus throughout lie on young men. The aim of this study is to examine how heterosexual male students at a university in Sweden view the movement both as a Swedish and a global phenomenon. Furthermore, the study examined if the students believe their attitudes toward sexual harassment have been affected or changed by the movement. This bachelor thesis attempted to answer the research questions and present the results by conducting focus group interviews. The presented results of the focus group interviews showed an overall positive attitude towards the purpose of the movement. However, a majority agreed that the movement had developed into something beyond its purpose and discussed the negative effects it brought with it. The participants expressed concern for the usage of the hashtag for minor incidents which eventually overshadowed the initial positive purpose of the movement. Through the study, it was furthermore revealed that the participants did not believe that a change in attitudes had occurred within themselves, even though they believed it may have brought change to other men in society.

No description available.

The thesis considers three women conferences arranged by the National Council of Women of Sweden (NCWS) in Stockholm at the turn of the 20th century. NCWS was a branch of the International Council of Women and at its height it was an umbrella-organisation for about forty Swedish women organisations. The focus is on the role of the conferences as arenas for women who wanted to prove their ability and competence in society. The content, the form and the function of the conferences are analysed. The question whether the conferences arranged by the NCWS reflected the ideas, dilemmas and strategies of the bourgeois women’s movement is addressed. A larger historical development is illuminated – the formation of the bourgeois women movements for the public sphere in the process of modernity. The thesis explores different theories and shows how the concepts of class, gender, public sphere, modernity and trans-nationalism were dealt with at the conferences. The women conferences have been treated as manifestations; as a quintessence of the ideas and ambitions of the movement. The thesis asserts that the ideology of the movements was formulated and expressed not only in spoken words, but also in festivities, symbols and sisterhood. The class identity was manifested in the form of which the conferences were conducted. On the one hand, the conference women showed loyalty to the conservative society and the rigid class position. On the other hand, the conference initiators wanted to improve women’s opportunities of becoming citizens and to move the boarders between the public and the private. Ideologies such as Internationalism and Scandinavism became important in creating a collective identity.

The dissertation explores the Swedish child welfare officer system (barnavårdsmannainstitutionen) using gender as an analytical tool. The child welfare officer system was a public program designed to support single mothers and monitor the welfare of children born out of wedlock. The study concentrates on the first half of the 20th century, and particularly covers the introduction of this system in 1917/18 and the changes it underwent in 1938, after an income maintenance law (bidragsförskott) for children of unwed mothers was introduced. In 1917, Sweden was one of the first countries in Europe to introduce legislation that formalized men’s obligations towards children born out of wedlock. Consequently, state officials, called child welfare officers, were required to perform mandatory investigations of paternity. Their task was also to make sure that fathers provided economic support and mothers carried out sufficient care. The 1938 income maintenance law was one of the social policy initiatives of the 1930s. Single mothers were assured payment from the state for child support and the child welfare officers then sought to reclaim the money from the absent father. The history of the child welfare officer system is used as a case to investigate the power dynamics of gender and class, and the relationship between the state, the social work professionals and the individual citizen, concurrent with the birth of the Swedish welfare state. The political debates, the institutional arrangements and the practices connected to this policy area have been analyzed. Thus, politicians, social workers and unwed mothers and fathers are all brought into focus. An analytical point of departure is that the welfare state ”does gender”, i.e. that the welfare state regulates and directs the relation between men and women. However, the state is also treated as a complex and changeable entity, where state and welfare policy also functions as a means to change gender relations. Thus, the study argues that the introduction of the child welfare officer system opened up a new public arena for women – as politicians, social workers and as mothers – in which they were able to renegotiate the meaning of gender and their relation to the state. Prevalent ideas of gender were questioned and challenged in the public sphere of politics and labor as well as in the private sphere of the family. The study consists of a number of empirical chapters in which this social bureaucracy is scrutinized from various perspectives. The child welfare officer system is analyzed both on a national and local level. The latter is done through a case study of the local work in Stockholm. Gender was a vital component to all these levels.

This thesis investigates the Europeanisation of civil society at national level through a case study of the Swedish Women’s Lobby (SWL), an umbrella organisation which serves as the Swedish member of the Brussels-based European Women’s Lobby (EWL). Conceptualising umbrella organisations as ‘meta-organisations’, in Ahrne and Brunsson’s term, Europeanisation is seen as a process which imposes meta-organisational structures on domestic-level civil society. Based largely on semi-structured interviews, the aim of the study is thus to analyse in what ways the women’s movement in Sweden has been affected by the imposed meta-organisational structure. The findings show that while the SWL has been successful in establishing itself as the actor for the Swedish women’s movement, this success also brought with it some problems. The meta-organisational structure has had certain formalising and excluding effects, as well as bringing internal tensions due to overlapping activities and the desire to speak with one voice. Applying a meta-organisation perspective on the Europeanisation of domestic civil society is thus shown to be useful as it contributes an understanding of how the EU has an impact on inter-organisational relations among civil society organisations. / Denna studie undersöker europeiseringen av civilsamhället på nationell nivå genom en fallstudie av Sveriges Kvinnolobby, en paraplyorganisation och den svenska medlemmen i den europeiska kvinnolobbyn – European Women’s Lobby (EWL) – i Bryssel. Paraplyorganisationer förstås i detta sammanhang utifrån Ahrne och Brunssons begrepp metaorganisationer, dvs. ’organisationer av organisationer’. Därmed ses europeisering som en process vilken medför meta-organisatoriska strukturer till civilsamhället på nationell nivå. Studien syftar därmed till att analysera hur kvinnorörelsen i Sverige påverkats av den påbjudna metaorganisatoriska strukturen och baseras främst på semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Resultaten visar att Sveriges Kvinnolobby varit framgångsrik i att etablera sig som aktören för Sveriges kvinnorörelse men att denna framgång även medfört en del problem. Den metaorganisatoriska strukturen har medfört vissa formaliserande och exkluderande effekter, men också interna spänningar på grund av överlappande aktiviteter och lobbyns önskan att tala med en röst. Att applicera ett meta-organisatoriskt perspektiv på europeiseringen av civilsamhället på nationell nivå visar sig därmed vara användbart då det bidrar till förståelsen för hur EU har betydelse för inter-organisatoriska relationer bland civilsamhällets organisationer.

Under det svenska 1960- och 1970-talet engagerade sig det svenska folket i en rad olika ideologiorienterade organisationer, internationella frågor eller folkrörelser, något som även tog sitt uttryck i kulturen. Mitt syfte med denna uppsats är att undersöka ett urval politiska affischer, utifrån Michael Baxandalls teori "The period eye", hur 1960- och 1970-talets konst påverkades av samtidens samhällstrukturer och politiska engagemang. Min tyngdpunkt kommer att ligga i de politiska affischer som på något sätt hade en anknytning till en alternativ rörelse, såsom Miljörörelsen, Kvinnorörelsen och Vietnamrörelsen. Men även den den svenska konstscenen i stort kommer att tillföras till undersökningen som en komplettering till förståelsen av affischernas uttryck och funktion, som ofta fabricerades utanför institutionella sammanhang. Dessa frågeställningar vill jag besvara med hjälp av den historiska bakgrunden och min analys: Vilka orsaker ligger bakom användandet av konstnärliga affischer vid spridningen av politisk propaganda? Det vill säga: Vilka faktorer gjorde att affischen användes flitigt som medium av de alternativa rörelserna istället för annan bildkonst? Hur kan den politiska andan från decennierna urskiljas konkret i affischerna? Hur skiljer sig affischkonsten från den mer institutionella konsten under dessa två decennier? Utifrån mina frågeställningar kommer jag att analysera tre politiska affischer genom att sätta in dem i ett historiskt perspektiv, vilket är deras samtid, 1960- och 1970-tal. Viktigt i det historiska perspektivet kommer att vara; de ekonomiska förutsättningarna, politikens uttryck i de olika sociala rörelserna, de internationella frågorna som präglade den svenska inrikespolitiken, synen på kulturarbetarnas politiska ansvar och konstnärens roll som politisk aktör.

Les intellectuels iraniens ont toujours été un groupe social important au sein de la société civile iranienne. Depuis 1990, ce champ d’intellectuels aux vois discordantes, s’élève face à la tentative d’islamisation de la société enclenchée par le pouvoir politique. Constitué en différents groupes, ces penseurs se penchent sur la potentialité d’instaurer Etat-Nation démocratique iranien. Cette recherche rend compte des différentes mouvances qui traversent la sphère intellectuelle iranienne actuelle et prend le parti de réfléchir à quatre groupes importants : les intellectuels "religieux", le cercle des philosophes, les historiens et enfin les sociologues politiques. Tous reconnaissent le risque d’une politisation du religieux et conjointement d’une certaine sacralisation du politique. Leurs réflexions construites autour d’un axe commun questionnant les notions «Etat » et « religion » révèlent un profond souci de changement. A travers cette étude qui met en parallèle les différents discours et les arguments de chacun, ce projet aborde les rapports qu’entretiennent ces intellectuels avec d’autres groupes de la société civile tels les femmes ou les étudiants. L’ambition de cette thèse est d’offrir un panorama théorique des interrogations actuelles en réfléchissant aux stratégies de ces intellectuels. / The Iranian intellectual has been always an important part of civil society. Since 1990, this intellectual field with conflicting voices, rising against islamization of society which has been enforced by political power. This intellectual stream is constituted of different groups bend over study of potentiality of establishment of democratic Iranian Nation-State. This study examines various spheres which crossing the actual Iranian intellectual domain and deliberates over four important categories: religious intellectual, philosophical circle, historians and political sociologists. All these thinkers conjointly consider the risk of politization of religion and the sacralization of politics. Their reflections are constructed around a common axe of two notions “State” and “religion”, which reveal the crucial question of change in political system. Through this approach which puts in a parallel direction different discourses and arguments beside each other, this study looks into the relations between the intellectual field and the other units of civil society. The ambition of this research is offering a theoretical panorama on present problematic of intellectual society with probing their strategies.

Trafficking in human beings and prostitution is an increasing occurrence within the EU. However, vast differences in legal frameworks regarding prostitution can be detected among member states.The Netherlands is an example where prostitution is regarded a legal activity. In other member states legal standings toward prostitution remain ambivalent, where Sweden here serves an example. Finally, Lithuania is among member states where prostitution is considered illegal.The purpose of this paper is therefore to study underlying attitudes and approaches that these three countries have in this rather delicate political question. By interpreting the content and quoting parts of propositions, an ideology analysis is constructed.The theory chapter consists of Rousseau’s theories, Objectivism, Radical Feminist Theory, and Sex-positive Feminist Theory. A model with the most important features of these theories is constructed and works as a base for the analysis.The general results suggest that the Government of Lithuania consistently uses arguments pending towards Radical Feminist Theory and Rousseauan values, with catholic morality as an additional important feature in the argumentation against prostitution. The Government of Sweden also views prostitution with predominantly Rousseauan and Radical Feminist theories. The Government of the Netherlands arguments greatly differ from these viewpoints. Instead, individualistic and sex-positive arguments remain dominant here.