LONDON – “Women hold up half the sky”, said Mao Zedong, although by and large in communist China women had a tough time playing second fiddle to the men. Here in Sweden women do almost hold up half the sky. If foreign minister Anna Lindh had not been murdered last year there might well be a female prime minister in power. For a decade half the cabinet have been women and women occupy nearly fifty percent of the seats in parliament.
It shows. When the government dares to suggest that it is thinking about raising taxes in this most highly taxed of nations to pay for better health and social services the country takes the news quietly. When the government decides to cut back on its military spending, likewise. The country, long socially progressive, has now copper bottomed its welfare state by putting woman in the driving seat.
According to the UN’s Human Development Report, the Swedes have had more success in producing equality between the sexes than any other country on earth. Come to Sweden and unravel the mystery of how such an economy, riddled with expensive props for encouraging women to work – free child care, year long maternity leave, flexible working hours – out does year after year nearly every other European economy and goes neck to neck with Britain’s growth rate and Tony Blair’s much touted, but seriously misunderstood, Anglo-Saxon model.
In fact Sweden is swamped by visitors from 10 Downing Street avid to absorb the lessons Sweden has to give. The so-called Anglo-Saxon model, virulent in its opposition to the corporatist, Franco-German social model, is, not so stealthily, using its ever growing capitalist-produced wealth to imbibe an even more socialistic model – the truly dynamic Scandinavian one. The attraction for Tony Blair is that private enterprise is at least as free as in Britain, women are at the center of working life and while Scandinavian social security payments are generous they all come with an obligation to find work or retrain. There is always a route out of poverty in Sweden but to take it and receive the handsome social security payments recipients have to undertake training for new careers. American observers who think Britain is moving into their social camp have got Tony Blair quite wrong. But then so have much of the German and French ruling elites.
Well, do come to Sweden! Here I am, during a glorious, cloudless summer with the ethereal Nordic light pluming through the dense pine forests and across the luminous lakes, as I take some time to be alone with my Swedish family. But even in paradise surrounded by Swedish women, I have to say I note a lot of falling short.
Women, as elsewhere in the world, have a longer working week than men. While it is true that men do more housework than anywhere else in the world, they still do ten hours a week less than women do. Swedish men are rather good at dealing with babies – men on the street, pushing a pram, are a common sight. Nevertheless, women devote twice as much time to childcare. Few men take up the government’s offer to pay them to take a year out whilst they look after the newborn. When it comes to laundry even the most emancipated men fall short, spending a mere 20 minutes a week on this task.
Yes, historically there has been male-female tension in the air in Sweden. Strindberg has it in his plays, “The Father” and “Miss Julia”. And cinematographer Ingmar Bergman has spent a long and fruitful life chronicling every pain filled tearing of the fabric of relationships across the great sexual divide. And now this year a feminist party has been launched, led by the former leader of the Communist party and including such luminaries as the ex wife of Prime Minister Goran Persson. However, most of the women I know here have little truck with contemporary, fundamentalist feminism.
And young men too are getting worried. A firm majority of students studying for prestigious professions such as doctors, veterinarians and lawyers are women. Women work harder, study more diligently and since the way is now open they are racing ahead. Only in business leadership, with its more conservative institutions, do women still seriously lag behind.
But the torments of Strindberg and Bergman have been outgrown. Over the last fifty years Swedish women have won most of their battles but have managed to retain their feminine charm. They are softer and gentler than say their French, German or American sisters, less demonstratively assertive, more reserved and simply quietly sure of themselves.
And young Swedish women, my daughter not least, can still outshine their European and North American contemporaries when it comes to mixing brains with beauty.
