Internationally recognized for and culturally self-identifying as a gender equality advocate, Sweden has seen a recent uptick in popular support among women voters for its far-right nationalist political party, the Sweden Democrats (SD). While nationalist movements are primarily distinguished by their nativist political rhetoric, academic study has consistently shown that nationalism also consistently promotes a traditional gender duality while denouncing feminism and gender equality practices. Likewise, SD also consistently opposes feminist and gender equality practices in stark contrast with mainstream Swedish political parties. This qualitative discourse analysis collected, categorized, and analyzed recent Facebook posts circulated by the Sweden Democrat Women's Association (Sverigedemokraterna kvinnoförbund) leadership to identify why women (ostensibly) served by Swedish state feminism vote for and even join SD in a leadership capacity. By utilizing constructivist theoretical frameworks of social and cultural identity with a post-structural analytical methodology focusing on problem conception, representation and dissemination, the resulting analysis shows that the dominating discursive theme is practically summarized as: "(in)security." In short, SD women perceive Sweden's (equality) feminism as unrelatable, irrelevant and/or intrusive in an "everyday" existence framed by a rapidly changing Swedish society due to record immigration, increased economic insecurity, and a weakening welfare state. In closing, three prime research areas are identified for future study: image-based content analysis of SD's political messaging, increased incorporation of security frameworks in investigative writing, as well as broadened research into how Swedish equality feminism can best include two consistently detached societal clusters: native-Swedish conservative and non-Western immigrant women.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-170579 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Bittner-Gibbs, Alyssa |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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