Åsa Lundqvist

• Professor at Lund University

This article aims to explore how policy translation and institutional legacies have shaped South Korean parental leave policies between 1995 and 2021. It draws on a document analysis of central political documents and interviews with a number of key policy actors in South Korea. The findings show that reforms of parental leave policies were impleme...

This study examines the political regulation of the family in Sweden between 1930 and 2010, a period where a relationship has always existed between gender equality ideology and family policies to a greater or lesser extent, and where the two have sometimes even overlapped or have become mutually reinforcing. Despite this, the relationship has been...

This chapter turns to the evolution of family policy in an era marked by the contraction of the state, erratic economic growth and cuts in welfare services. Developments in family policy (and social policy in general) had formerly been shaped by seemingly endless economic growth, creating a manoeuvring space for ambitious reformers. Around 1980, ho...

Feminists across nations demand gender equality. Resistance against long-lasting patterns of inequality in society, at work and within the family is growing. New patterns of gender relations prevail across Europe and serve as examples of the ongoing resistance against gender inequalities. Female employment continues to expand. As a result, the male...

This book looks at political attempts to create a 'modern family' and the aspiration to regulate the family and establish gender equality, examining the regulation of the family in Sweden between 1930 and today.

We should stop hammering in the concept of ‘women's two roles’. Both men and women have one lead role, that as human beings. The role as human beings entails, as a necessity and as a moral obligation, but also a sweet experience and much else, taking care of your offspring. If one does not admit that, one should understand that one contributes to m...

The dire consequences of industrialisation triggered much debate over the ‘social question’, in Sweden as elsewhere. Poverty and unemployment were the two main issues debated in political and intellectual circles during the early decades of the 20th century, but they were not the only ones. Rescuing the family from the destructive effects of indust...

The first decade of the new millennium has been a dramatic period in the history of gender equality and family policy. Starting with an analysis of how (radical) feminism came to the fore in the policy battles of election campaigns in the early 2000s, which resulted in the establishment of a new political party called Feminist Initiative, this chap...

The welfare institutions that were established in post-war Sweden had counterparts elsewhere in Europe, and the ideas behind the welfare policies were primarily imported from elsewhere. The Beveridge Report, which shaped many debates and policy practices in the immediate post-war, is a case in point (Beveridge, 1942). As time went on, international...

This book looks at political attempts to create a 'modern family' and the aspiration to regulate the family and establish gender equality, examining the regulation of the family in Sweden between 1930 and today.

This paper investigates the regulation of publicly organized early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Denmark and Sweden, through the regulatory welfare state (RWS) framework. The analysis focuses on how alterations in funding and quality of care are shaped by governmental and nongovernmental actors at national and local levels of government. T...

This article analyses the history of the Swedish welfare state, with a special emphasis on the development of Swedish family policy between 1930 and 1975. It is argued that a coalition between state officials and state-appointed experts was active in the shaping and legitimising of the concept of family as well of family politics. The underlying as...

In recent years, parenting support has gained traction in the Swedish welfare state in both policy and practice. Parenting is seen as determining child outcomes and are thus in need of knowledge and expertise. Yet, at the same time, parents are conceptualised as experts of their own child. The intriguing paradox between parents being experts while...

In this paper, the role and significance of opinion-shaping and persuasion activities are explored through an analysis of the activation of women in the Swedish labour market in the 1960s, highlighting the ways in which gender equality ideals became infused in these activities through a process of ‘transformative state feminism’. The analysis draws...

The aim of this article is to explore how ‘children's rights’ and ‘gender equality’ are articulated in parenting support policies in Sweden, and how these policies are enacted in practice with respect to the two perspectives mentioned. The analysis builds on key policy documents and interviews with civil servants working on parenting support on loc...

Sverige har länge betraktats som en demokratisk förebild och ett öppet och solidariskt välfärdssamhälle. Under 2000-talet har social ojämlikhet och boendesegregering ökat, åtföljd av rasism och en allt mer restriktiv flyktingpolitik. Sverige är en nation i ombildning. Åtstramningspolitik och högerpopulism har fått bred förankring i partipolitiken...

Introduktion till temanumret.

This article sets out to investigate the political development and implementation of parenting support services in Sweden. The object of the analysis is on how parenting support has been organised and how it has been articulated in policy debates, and also key elements of parenting support in practice. The analysis shows that parenting support buil...

The 1960s marked the beginning of a new era of family and gender relations in Sweden. It was a time when traditional values and ideas concerning the family were questioned and redefined in policymaking. The Women's movement and political radicalization underpinned the emergence of gender equality policy ambitions, culminating in several gender neut...

This chapter deals with the period between 1930 and 1940, a time when the family became an increasingly important reform object in Sweden. The period marks the beginning of the development of modern family policy, framed at the time as population policy. The dominant discourse stressed the functions of the nuclear family as a source of stability in...

This chapter discusses gender-equality policy during the first decade of the new millennium, initially marked by the rise and fall of radical feminism in policy making, and later by the diversity turn in gender-equality policy. The social-democratic government lost in the election of 2006, and was succeeded by a centre-right (alliance) government....

This book explores the political regulation of the family in Sweden. It examines the historical development of family policy and the ensuing institutionalisation of gender equality in that context. The analysis begins in the 1930s, when the family became an increasingly important reform object within the political sphere, and goes all the way to 20...

This chapter looks at the intellectual and political debate that led to the overhaul of family policy in the late 1960s and the 1970s. A sex-role debate, a radicalisation of the equality rhetoric within the labour movement, and heightened labour-market intervention on behalf of women were some of the ingredients of the political climate of the 1960...

This chapter draws together the findings of the preceding chapters, highlighting the reforms and visions that have shaped family-policy paradoxes in Sweden over more than seven decades and have created the currently widely debated policy model for reconciling work and family life. Few if any policy areas show such continuity as family policy and ge...

This chapter suggests that an ambivalent family ideal dominated the period between 1940 and 1960. This ambivalence reflected a deepening of the work–family balance paradox from the 1930s; while family- and social-policy reforms supported the male-breadwinner model by enabling women to stay at home through initiatives such as universal maternity lea...

This chapter covers the period from the 1980s until the new millennium. This was a period marked by the complex interplay of deregulation of the Swedish model during the 1980s, a deep economic crisis in the early 1990s, and the development of gender equality as a policy field, also embracing family policy. Gender-equality policy as well as family p...

Family policy paradoxes examines the political regulation of the family in Sweden between 1930 and today. It draws attention to the political attempts to create a 'modern family' and the aspiration to regulate the family and establish gender equality, thereby shedding light on ongoing policy processes within Europe and how these can be understood i...

This book examines the political regulation of the family in Sweden between 1930 and today. It draws attention to the political attempts to create a ‘modern family’ and the aspiration to regulate the family and establish gender equality, thereby shedding light on ongoing policy processes within Europe and how these can be understood in the light of...

Changing Relations of Welfare is concerned with the complexities of family relations and practices in the recent past and how these have been imagined, addressed or elided in policy making. Organized around the themes of marriage, parenthood and employment in family policy, and migration and multiculturalism, this book investigates how debates abou...

This chapter examines the arguments behind social- and family-policy proposals between 1930 and 1970. The meaning and understanding of gender behind the expansion of Swedish family politics between 1930 and 1970 are discussed. The first phase includes the period between 1930 and the early 1940s, a time when ‘a brand new family’ was introduced as a...

Gender equality is often seen as a hallmark of the Nordic countries. This book explores this notion by examining the meanings of gender that underpin policies in the Scandinavian welfare states, historically and today. It focuses on three Scandinavian countries – Denmark, Norway, and Sweden – and the policy reforms that have occurred relating to fa...

Introduction Should the state regulate family affairs? If so, how and under what circumstances? These questions have dominated family policy debates over many decades and in most states. In Sweden, many ideas on how ‘the family’ should be organised have been presented by intellectuals, politicians and experts over time, and reforms of family regula...

Family politics has been important in the development of the Swedish “women-friendly” and weak-breadwinner welfare state. This article analyzes the development of Swedish family politics during the past century by taking as its point of departure the amalgamation of political ambitions, social reforms, and ideas put forward by experts in government...

Falling birth rates within the European Union have given rise to a number of studies, trying to analyse and interpret why women (and men) choose not to have (many) children. One attempt in this direction is made by an ongoing EU-project, involving eight countries, including Sweden. Qualitative interviews focusing on couples' decisions to have- or n...

Wishing, choosing and wanting. On the decision to have a childFalling birth rates within the European Union have given rise to a number of studies trying to analyse and interpret why women (and men) choose not to have (many) children. One attempt in this direction is made by an ongoing EU-project, involving eight countries, including Sweden. Qualit...

This article tries to illuminate the political conceptualisation of gender in twentieth-century Sweden. It is argued that the notion of gender is partly shaped through a conceptual similarity between an older societal structure with patriarchal principles, marked by a strong gender division of labour, called brukssamhällen (rural industrial communi...