To Örebro University

„Það var Marx sem leiddi mig inn á svið ástarinnar“ segir Anna Guðrún Jónasdóttir prófessor emeritus í bókarkafla sem hún skrifar árið 2010. Þar fjallar hún sérstaklega um ástarkraft, hugtakið sem hún þróaði með hliðsjón af hugtökum Marx um vinnukraft og arðrán. Hér fá íslenskir lesendur loks að lesa um hugtök hennar á íslensku en hún hefur verið mikilvirkur fræðimaður í hartnær 30 ár og ritað allt sitt efni á ensku eða sænsku.

On June 18th the Faculty of Political Science, University of Iceland, celebrated 100 years of women’s‘ voting rights in Iceland with a special conference, Power and democracy 100 years later. In association with the conference Dr. Anna Guðrún Jónasdóttir, Professor emerita at the University of Örebro, Sweden, was awarded an honorary doctorate at the Faculty of Political Science. Anna Guðrún was the first Icelandic woman to complete a doctorate in political science, in 1991, and also the first to embark on an advanced academic career in political science and gender studies. It is therefore highly appropriate that Anna Guðrún should be awarded the first honorary doctorate at the Faculty of Political Science, where these disciplines are located. Her research covers a broad spectrum, including political science, sociology, economic history, psychology and gender studies. She was among the first to deal in a theoretical manner with gender, power and politics, which was considered rather provocative at the start of her academic career in the early 1970s. She is a pioneer in intertwining political research and gender studies and her most important research is in the field of power and personal gender relations. Anna Guðrún moved to Sweden at an early age but has kept in touch with the Icelandic research community. Below we publish her acceptance speech on the occasion when the honorary doctorate was awarded. It reflects clearly how her ideas have developed and her intimate sense for how personal and political factors bring politics and gender studies closer at the same time as she deepens and broadens both of their subjects.

This paper arises from collective work within the 5-year Swedish Research Council project, “Feminist Theorizings of Intersectionality”, organised within the GEXcel Collegium for Advanced Transdisciplinary Gender Studies (Örebro-Karls-tad-Linköping Universities), with a specific focus on the equality architecture, and in part from the EU FP6 project QUING.

The whole larger project examines intersectionality as a central concept in con-temporary gender studies, in relation and dialogue with the diverse, and some-times conflictual, theoretical and political stances in feminist debates. The project is designed against the background of the rich and diverse feminist traditions for theorizing of intersectionality, but it is also informed by the tensions between these traditions.

This paper analyses and compares how equality architectures (Walby, Arm-strong, Strid, 2012, Social Politics) in Europe are restructured and challenged by the developments related to intersectionality and diversity, and the implications of the restructuring for theories of intersectionality . It links concepts of equality and intersectionality to policy frames and frameworks . It examines how the chal-lenges of intersectionality are reflected and dealt with “on the ground”, in practical equality architectures on national and institutional level, e .g . in governments and universities, and the implications for gender equality and for the quality of the gender equality architecture . It takes the merger of equality institutions in Euro-pean countries as case studies and analyses the implications of the mergers for theory and practice.

Preliminary conclusions based on previous research (Walby, Armstrong, Strid, 2012, Social Politics, QUING) suggest that even though the quality of the architec-ture may have improved by the inclusion of multiple inequalities, there may be a reduction of quality in terms of resources . For theory, preliminary conclusions suggest that intersectionality as mutual shaping (Walby, Armstrong, Strid, 2012, Sociology) may be a more successful approach to theory and practice than the often-prioritised mutual constitution