Det befriande ansvarets paradox : En genusvetenskaplig studie av detfeministiska jämlikhetsinitiativet #killmiddag

Currently, men’s responsibility is the focus of much of the public talk on gender equality in Sweden.This has given rise to a number of organisations carrying the overall ambition to include menin what has traditionally been regarded as a women´s issue. One of these initiatives is called #killmiddag,”dinner for guys”, and can be understood as a call out for men to get together and have intimateconversations with each other in order to free themselves from destructive masculinitynorms. In this thesis, the feminist equality initiative #killmiddag is scrutinized with the aim to findwhat possibilities and restraints the initiative might give rise to in regards to issues connected togender equality. The empirical material consists of the initiatives conversational guides and instructionsalong with a number of press articles published between the years of 2016-2018. In order toanalyze this material, specifically the role of conversations, experience and emotions this thesis usesresearch about therapeutic discourse and how this is linked to contemporary ideals about intimacy.This analysis focuses on how problems and solutions are articulated discursively, and how categorieslike ”gender equality” is filled with meaning. Using research concerning the effects of marketbasedforms of governing, my goal is to further contribute to a discussion about what happens with”gender equality” when market rationalities come to replace conflicting interests in politics. Assistedby a poststructuralist approach this thesis highlights some of the problems in using personalexperience as a source of objective knowledge, and how the use of emotions and intimacy, withtheir inbuilt epistemological fragility, might not necessarily be considered apt when striving for politicalchange