Love, power and sisterhood

"The personal is political"

The women’s movement of the seventies was engaged in all kinds of areas. "The personal is political" was their common slogan. Group 8 spoke about the "double oppression" – women were oppressed at home and in the workplace.

Sexuality

Women’s rights to their own sexuality were a vital theme. The contraceptive pill had become legal in Sweden in 1964. The pill was a revolutionary thing: the ancient fear of unwanted pregnancies largely vanished. The first pills were considerably stronger than those of today, with more side effects. It was, for instance, not unusual that girls on the pill gained a lot of weight. The women’s movement demanded harmless pills. Moreover, they demanded that contraceptives for men should be subject to research, which as yet is not done to any considerable degree.

Abortion

För fri abort

Abortion was always the last resort in cases of involuntary pregnancy. The Swedish legislation of 1938 admitted abortion for medical, humanitarian, eugenic (genetic), and – after an addition in 1946 – for sociomedical reasons. Even though applications of the law had become increasingly liberal, dialogues with social welfare officers were mandatory, and a so-called twofold doctor’s certificate (i.e. a certificate written by two physicians) had to be issued before an abortion was granted. The disclosure in the sixties of Swedish women’s so-called “abortion trips” to Poland served as new fuel for the debate on abortion. In 1965, an abortion commission was appointed. Similar to many of the established women’s organizations, the new women’s movement was deeply involved in the question of amending the Swedish Abortion Act. The demand on "the right to free abortion" was a perpetual theme at their demonstrations. At the height of the debate about abortion in the 1970s, local groups were assembled to draw attention to this issue. Election meetings were disturbed by slogans, leaflets and contributions to discussions. The groups put up posters with the slogan "Free abortion" around Stockholm, and, in 1971, they participated in a joint international demonstration for free abortion at Sergels Torg. At SAP’s (the Social Democratic Labour Party) congress in the autumn of 1972, Group 8 spread leaflets, showing their discontent with the fact that the abortion commission was postponed. Their struggle was successful – in 1974, a new Abortion Act was adopted by the Government, which came into force in 1975. The Act stipulated that women were to decide independently about an abortion up to and including the 18th week of pregnancy.

Painless childbirth

In May 1971, Group 8 held the meeting "Childbirth – anxiety or joy?" at the Stockholm City Museum. When the activists were mobilized they spread about 6,000 leaflets throughout the city’s antenatal clinics and child health centres. The reason for the action was that mothers who worried about their pregnancies and labour pains were left without help. The activists had prepared their questions to representatives of the National Board of Health and Welfare, physicians, and others responsible for these issues. There were hundreds of women in the meeting hall, of whom many spoke to the participants about labour-related medical assault. The following day, under the headline "Would it be possible for women to experience painless childbirth?", Dagens Nyheter contained a full page about various methods of pain relief. Bills proposing painless childbirth had already been presented to the parliament by a number of actors, for instance social democratic women; however, it was the meeting held by Group 8 which was to hasten the change of people’s attitude towards painless childbirth as the meeting aroused wide attention.

Parental benefits and child care

There was a considerable lack of municipal child-care services in the 1960s and 1970s. The women’s movement made demands for an extension of the day-care centres, for being able to work, and for the sake of their children. "Adequate, free day-care and after-school centres to all children" became one of the most important issues for Group 8 and other women’s groups around the country during the entire 1970s. "Adequate day-care centres to all children" and "Every child is everyone’s child" were two of their slogans. Women activists wrote comment letters to child-care commissions and performed joint actions, also together with some of the action groups for day-care centres.

Another requirement was that men should take their share in the care and upbringing of their children in a new way. This was considered a good thing, for men’s role as well as for children’s contact with their fathers. Parental benefits were introduced in 1974, which gave to both parents the right to share the parental leave at the birth of their child. Paternity leave was introduced as late as 1995.

The sexual crime commission

Legislation on rape and sexual crimes against women was another area in which the women’s movement was engaged. In Sweden, rape in marriage was not prohibited until 1965.

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Rape was often considered as something that women had themselves to blame, and women’s behaviour and clothing were treated as factors that would influence the judgment of this crime. In the opinion of a majority of debaters this was a quite unreasonable state of affairs; no man has the right to rape a woman, regardless of what precedes the rape. A "no" is always a "no". In 1971 a "commission for new stipulations on sexual crimes in the penal code", the so-called sexual crime commission was appointed. When its official report, SOU 1976:9, was presented in 1976 it became the source of women’s massive protests. Group 8 in Stockholm criticized it for expressing an antiquated view on women and for turning a raped woman into an accomplice. A front line consisting of thirteen women’s organizations was formed against the commission’s proposal: women’s federations of the Centre, the Liberal, the Conservative, and the Social Democratic parties, the Fredrika-Bremer-Association, Husmodersförbundet (an association of housewives), Kvinnfolk, Lesbisk Front, SKV, and Yrkeskvinnors Klubbars Riksförbund (the national federation of the clubs of business and professional women). In June 1976 they called on the Ministry of Justice to demand a new commission. As a result of the protests, the investigation was closed and a new commission, this time with more women, was appointed.

The new penal code, adopted at last in 1984, made it clear that the victim’s behaviour before the crime was committed or her relationship to the perpetrator do not affect the classification of the crime. A new definition, serious rape, was introduced for particularly severe cases and with a special range of punishment. The Code has been further amended, most recently in 2005.