”A women´s right to become a human being – to the fullest extent.” : Swedish women´s economic citizenship 1921-1971

The aim of this dissertation is to review the molding process of the politics that preceeded the work for gender equality which inSwedengathered speed in the early 1970s. Particular focus has been put to how society through legislation, economic and social privileges during the years 1921-1971 affected Swedish women’s possibilities to make a living and to achieve economic independence. In the dissertation three commissions initiated by the government have been analysed, all of which have been considered paramount for Swedish women’s economic emancipation. The stance that has been applied presumes that the way in which a “problem” has been formulated and framed is of importance for which measures will obtain interpretative preference, thus having an influence on both legislation and the politics pursued, and which measures were considered inconceivable. The dissertation demonstrates that different interpretations of the problems, based on disparate values and indisputable suppositions of how women as regards economic issues should be, choose and act, to varying degree and effect converged in the reports presented by the commissions. In the politics applied women were then manouvered into another economic practice than men, but also into different activities for different groups of women. One of the main arguments in this dissertation is that in spite of the fact that parts of the women’s liberation movement were active in this molding process during the years 1921-1971, it was not the result of liberal and women-friendly politics. Change over time was pushed by governmentality. By, in the commissions analysed, problematising how certain women’s behaviour contributed to major social problems, such as a dropping marriage frequency, decreasing nativity and preventing economy from expanding, the rights and other social benefits would steer them into serving what was regarded as the public good. Thus, during the time period reviwed, Swedish women´s extended rights and other social benefits were not implemented to create possibilities for women to achieve economic independence, but as a means to resolve other superior social problems