To Örebro University

Online violence against queer sex workers is a growing research field and societal problem. This article explores modalities of violence against queer online sex workers in Turkey, a context characterised by homophobic and anti-queer politics. Based on narrative interviews conducted with queer online sex workers in Turkey and grounded in a feminist understanding of violence, the article illustrates how different forms of violence travel between the online and offline by identifying three spatiotemporal patterns: the offline experience of online violence, the threatening offline, and the merging of online and offline. The article concludes that while the violence is often banal, mundane, and normalised, the impacts are both felt and embodied in the offline context. Further, broadening the conceptualisation of violence benefits the investigation of how violence(s) travels between the offline and online contexts and where they intersect, thereby contributing to the fields of violence studies, feminist studies, and queer sex work studies.

Summary: It is widely accepted that honor-based violence is a lived reality and a serious problem. However, honor-based violence is also a contested academic and political field, characterized by a polarized debate about whether or not the violence comprises stereotyping images of immigrants. This article asks how honor-based violence can be understood in light of this polarization, and what consequences it may have for clients and social workers. It is based on interview data with 235 adults with either professional (n = 199) or personal experiences (n = 36) of honor-based violence in Sweden. The data has been thematically coded and analyzed using the concepts of culturalization and intersectionality.

Findings: Honor-based violence is simultaneously a lived reality and teeming with stereotypes that are constructed by culturalizing images of nation, gender, age, religion, and sexuality. These stereotypes constitute forms of violence themselves and decrease clients’ trust in society and its institutions. Hence, the stereotypes become obstacles to social workers’ capacity to support those exposed to violence. At a general level, the stereotypes contribute to retaining the exposed in violence. In contrast, intersectional approaches to understanding honor-based violence have the potential to capture clients’ self-perceived and complex formulations of the causes of, and the character of, their situation, and thus increase the possibilities for adequate support.

Applications: The article's findings can support social workers’ understanding of the complexity of honor-based violence and strengthen their possibilities and capacities to develop antiracist and nonviolent communicative practices and, thus, acknowledge clients’ varying experiences and individual needs.

The aim of the article is to discuss how thinking about gender-based violence intersectionally and in context can not only enrich our understanding but also lead to transformative change in organizations. The article argues that to better understand gender-based violence in universities and research institutions, analyses need to be intersectional and contextual. Such approaches go beyond binary understandings of gender and narrow legalistic definitions of gender-based violence. The article reflects on how to operationalize this to derive starting points for intersectional categories to consider and contextual factors to measure at micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. It concludes that a multilevel intersectional analysis leads to more nuanced knowledge on experiences of gender-based violence and is, therefore, better equipped to inform the development of measures to eradicate the problem in an inclusive way.

This chapter presents an overview of feminist legal and political thought, aiming at discussing the different perspectives within feminist thought. In the first part, basic concepts in feminist thought such as gender, patriarchy, and feminism are explained, and a brief overview of the historical evolution of feminist movements is provided. The other two sections focus in greater detail on political and legal theories, respectively, including a critical analysis of the influence of patriarchy on mainstream legal and political discourses. The chapter will further provide a description of how classical concepts of political or legal tradition have been reconsidered from a feminist point of view, and a short presentation of the most important issues at stake in both these fields.

This article problematises gender-mainstreaming in Swedish policy responses to COVID-19 in relation to economic politics. The aim is to understand how gender mainstreaming was implemented, and with what effects. Little is still known about gender mainstreaming in crisis management and policymaking, and even less is known in relation to pandemic policy responses. To contribute to this field of knowledge, the article therefore analyses the Swedish National Recovery and Resilience Plan, supplemented by interviews with public servants, to understand the factors that impact the implementation of gender mainstream-ing in policymaking in times of societal crises. At a theoretical level, the article draws on feminist institutionalism and implementation studies, the notion of resilience, and insights from critical frame analysis. The data is based on a larger dataset collected as part of the EU-funded RESISTIRe: Responding to Outbreaks through Co-creative Inclusive Equality Strategies project. The results indicate that gender mainstreaming is limited in its rationale and scope in times of crisis and that the integration of a gender equality perspective in crisis management needs to be developed in several important ways.

This chapter deals with gender economics, gender and management, and genderand innovation. After introducing the general concept of feminist economics andits critique of mainstream economics, this chapter explains the meaning of genderindicators, gender parity, gender equality, and gender mainstreaming. It furtherinvestigates the factors causing inequalities in the labour market. Gender isafterwards addressed from a managerial perspective, embracing a multidimen-sional notion of performance, and considering both the management of privateand public organisations. Finally, the topic gender and innovation is deepened byexplaining the importance of intellectual property rights, as well as the poorvisibility of women inventors in society.

Artikeln handlar om mäns våld mot kvinnor i nära relationer i Sverige. Syftet är att redogöra för kvinnors våldserfarenhet i nutid, och att relatera den till kvinnors utsatthet för tjugo år sedan. Artikeln använder ett feministiskt våldsperspektiv för att undersöka kvinnors utsatthet för mäns våld och dess kopplingar till kvinnors hälsa och välmående. Data baseras på en enkätundersökning (n=6 611) som fångar kvinnors samlade erfarenheter av fysiskt våld, sexuellt våld och hot omvåld. Resultaten visar, för det första, att kvinnors och tjejers erfarenhet av våld i det formellt jämställda Sverige är omfattande: 55 % av kvinnorna i studien har utsatts för fysiskt våld, sexuellt våld eller hot om våld från en man. För det andra, visar resultaten att våldet inte verkar minska över tid. Tvärtom har under en tjugoårsperiod mäns våld mot kvinnor ökat, trots politiskt tal om och fokus på frågan under samma period. För det tredje, visar resultaten att unga tjejer är särskilt utsatta för mäns och killars våld, inte minst för sexuellt våld. För det fjärde, visar resultaten på ett samband mellan olika former av våld och ett sammanhållet mönster mellan våldsutsatthet och hälsa. Resultaten diskuteras i ljuset av den första svenska omfångsstudien av mäns våld mot kvinnor, Slagen dam (2001).

This paper examines men’s violence against women in intimate relationships in Sweden. The aim is to describe women’s experiences of violence and relate it to women’s experiences twenty years ago. It uses a feminist violence perspective to examine women’s experiences of men’s violence and its consequences. The data is based on a survey (n=6 611) which captures women’s collective experiences of physical violence, sexual violence and threats of violence. The results show, firstly, that women’s and girls’ experience of violence in gender-equal Sweden is extensive: 55% of the women in the study have been subjected to physical violence, sexual violence or threats of violence made by a man. Secondly, the results show that violence does not seem to decrease over time. On the contrary, over a twenty-year period, men’s violence against women has increased, despite a political discourse and focus on the issue during these years. Thirdly, the results show that young girls are particularly exposed/subjected to men’s and boys’ violence, including sexual violence. Fourthly, the results show a correlation between different forms of violence and a pattern of exposure to violence and health. The results are discussed in relation to the first Swedish prevalence study on men’s violence against women, Captured Queen (2001)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a multifaceted crisis, impacting health, the economy, policy and society at large, and also resulting in a humanitarian crisis. These crises have impacted everyone, although the effects have been unevenly distributed, leading to further disadvantage and marginalisation for those who were already vulnerable and marginalised. The pandemic laid bare and intensified pre-existing gender inequalities in many aspects of life, from the labor market and educational opportunities to health and social protection systems. The unequal impacts on women and men have been observed in the economy and employment, in domestic work and care, in physical and mental health, and in violence. The collection of articles in this special issue critically interrogates these key issues relat-ing to the impact of the pandemic on gender equality in Europe, highlighting exacerbated gender inequalities, policy responses and the potential for a gender-responsive recovery. This special issue brings together a collection of eight articles that investigate various aspects of gender inequality exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and that explore potential pathways towards achieving greater gender equality in the post-pandemic world. They summarise the findings and contributions of several social scientists and also of two EU funded projects: RESISTIRe (GA 101015990) and GEARING Roles (GA 824536). The articles are structured around five main themes: labor market disparities, education and skill development, social and political responses, post-pandemic opportunities, and care. Each article contributes unique insights, empirical findings and policy recommendations from a feminist perspective to enrich the ongoing discourse on gender equality. Together, the articles show the necessity of feminist analysis of crisis, and reveal the structural roots of inequalities while simultaneously emphasising the necessity for transformative action to address inequalities.

The aim of RESISTIRÉ is to understand the unequal impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak and its policy and societal responses on behavioural, social and economic inequalities and to work towards individual and societal resilience. RESISTIRÉ does so by collecting and analysing policy data, quantitative data and qualitative data in the EU27 (except Malta), Iceland, Serbia, Turkey and the UK, and translating these into insights to be used for designing, devising and piloting solutions for improved policies and social innovations, which in turn can be deployed by policymakers, stakeholders and actors in the field across different policy domains. The project relies on an eleven-partner multidisciplinary and multisectoral European consortium and a well-established network of researchers in 30 countries.

Throughout the course of RESISTIRÉ, research conducted consistently show how already vulnerable and marginalised groups have become even more vulnerable and marginalised; existing inequalities have increased, and new ones have emerged (Axelsson et al. 2021; Cibin et al. 2021, 2022; 2023; Harroche et al. 2023; Sandström et al. 2022; Stovell et al. 2021, 2022). Significantly less overall attention has been paid to practices that may transform inequalities and very little attention has been given to individual agency. The third and final research cycle in RESISTIRÉ therefore looked to the future and shifted focus to individual ‘better stories’ (Georgis 2013; Altınay 2019) and strategic forms of agency (Lister 2004, 2021) of marginalised groups during the pandemic. With an analytical focus on gender+ inequalities, this report addresses the following overall research question: What kind of agency is practiced, or available to practice, by individuals and street-level bureaucrats, with an emphasis on what enables and what hinders strategic agency?

The report is based on two methods of qualitative data collection: narrative interviews with individuals strategically recruited based on their marginalised or vulnerable profile and semi-structured interviews with front-line workers in public authorities, so called ‘street-level bureaucrats’. The material is extensive; all in all, it includes 321 individuals, who generously shared their knowledge and experiences. The semi-structured interviews with street-level bureaucrats (n=24) covers nine European countries and were conducted by consortium partners. The narrative interviews (n=297) were conducted by the consortium partners and a network of 21 national researchers covering the EU27 (except Malta), and Iceland, Serbia, Turkey, and the UK. The interview material was analysed thematically, drawing on Ruth Lister’s (2004, 2021) typology of agency and an intersectional approach to gender which acknowledges the centrality of gender and the mutual shaping of multiple complex inequalities (Walby et al. 2012).