Note: I had to rewrite this post three times since WordPress used an autosave of the wrong version. Yep, WP can be really stupid.
While on the way to a tweetmeetup at the Scandic Anglais Hotel, LBO and I stopped by to Vapiano for dinner. When we arrived at the hotel for the meetup, it was packed up people, for a media event. Like buffons we wandered around for 20min and never found the group, and of course had no contact numbers. Why would we do that!
Instead, we bought a glass of wine and headed over to an empty. At that point, a disheveled, yet handsome, blond haired swede ask LBO something. I couldn’t hear and she didn’t quite understand the Swedish. We sat down anyway and then heard our American accents.
“You’re from America?! Where are you from ??”
And that’s how the night started with a bunch of folks from Dagens Media, one of the biggest Swedish media groups.
We ended up making a round table of LBO, Linus (Swedish guy named after the lovable Peanuts character), Nat (Swedish girl studying media), and myself.
Being the reporter he is, he allowed us to ask three questions.
What is gender equality in Sweden?
Has feminism gone too far in Sweden?
Are Swedish men bending too much to Swedish feminism?
I want to stay home for as much time as possible if i have a child; i wouldn’t mind taking care of the baby for 90% of the time. but i guess the problem is, can i, as a man, be capable of taking a baby 90% of the time?
I presume that means since men cannot breastfeed, there are some things that are going to be really hard.
Women by instinct are more nurturing and that men have a tendency to be more ambitious and aggressive which helps them in business
A very interesting observation but not endorsed by everyone in the group. However, Linus always managed to turn all statements into maybe/possible and did not take a stand on either side.
“women are bright, really bright. they should get more in life.”
A very true statement, and he voted for the feminist party. But a couple of the other girls at the table, did not. I understood that it was because the feminist party is a bit too extreme in its points of view.
Are we going against evolution by making everything 50/50 equal?
Feminism is overrated and overdone
A quote from one of the girls from that night. She said that feminism in Sweden is far more ‘feminist’ and pushes equality to the brink of twisting society. It seems that Sweden struggles with equality as many other countries but in a different way? How far is too equal? Are men and women supposed to be the same on every level. On certain levels, income, education, promotion equalities makes sense. On other levels, like the “bare breast” campaign (advocating that women can be topless at the saunas and swimming houses), can take equality one step too far. The question is, how far should equality go?
Men and women are built differently so maybe men are supposed to be hunters and women are better as the nurturing, home type
There was once a cover on Time or Newsweek magazine (I can’t remember now) about women and men being physically built differently. It caused an uproar in the feminist community that “maybe” the genders are not biologically the same. How much we should be equal is up for society to debate.
