Afraid and restricted vs bold and equal: Women’s fear of violence and gender equality discourses in Sweden

Abstract

This study analyses the responses and reactions among women in Umeå during the period of threat from the Haga Man: a serial rapist operating between 1998 and 2006, and highlights how women in this new situation handled feelings of vulnerability and fear of violence in public space. The article analyses the ways women positioned themselves in their narratives and how this could be understood in terms of how they negotiated spaces for agency within a context where public space has been represented as safe and gender-equal. Women's fear of violence is discussed in relation to Swedish gender equality discourses and contextual constructions of femininity. The research is based on empirical data collected through in-depth interviews with women in Umeå. The results show the difficulties of claiming the official position of a gender-equal femininity. The informants' ambivalence, and partly anger, in relation to a femininity they wanted but could not have also created an opportunity for critique of women's position in society and thus a challenge to a presumed gender equality that stands in the way of addressing issues of gendered power relations.

Everyday self‐defence: Hollaback narratives, habitus and resisting street harassment

“…Wise and Stanley () argue that women share knowledge about managing sexual violence, and Stanko () reports that women draw on stories told by other women in their social milieu. Danger stories are not absorbed uncritically; advice may be adopted, adapted or rejected (Sandberg and Rönnblom ). Koselka describes respondents ‘self‐talking’, drawing on discourses about fear and freedom: ‘they tried to convince themselves that there is no need to fear’ (: 306, see also Sandberg and Rönnblom ).…”

Seismologies of emotion: fear and activism during domestic violence

“…Fear has been a popular object of study in research on violence, whether fear of crime (e.g. Sandberg and Rönnblom 2013;Pain 2000) or fear in the war on/of terror (Gregory and Pred 2007;Robin 2004). But despite its ubiquity, fear is still largely discussed as a monolithic force that acts to disempower.…”

Practicing Gender and Race in Online Activism to Improve Safe Public Space in Sweden

“…The two online activist groups explicitly practiced primarily gender and race, respectively, by emphasizing or acknowledging difference. In the context of Sweden, this is significant, given that the dominant available gendered and racialized practices— gender equality and color‐blind racism respectively—are premised upon the notion of sameness and non‐existence of difference between genders or races, but effectively privilege a male, white norm (Hübinette and Lundström ; Hübinette and Tigervall ; Sandberg and Rönnblom ). That both groups practiced gender and race as difference therefore signals a questioning of social hierarchies.…”

“…In Sweden, two predominant gendered practices exist in tension with one another: gender equality that emphasizes equality between the categories of “women” and “men” and everyday sexism that primarily disadvantage women. Sandberg and Rönnblom () demonstrate this tension regarding women's fear and safety. Ordinary women dealing with a serial rapist in the northern city moved ambivalently between a position of equality femininity, where they felt they should not need to be afraid or change their actions, and a position of traditional femininity, where they felt they were supposed to be afraid and restrict their actions (Sandberg and Rönnblom ).…”

“…Sandberg and Rönnblom () demonstrate this tension regarding women's fear and safety. Ordinary women dealing with a serial rapist in the northern city moved ambivalently between a position of equality femininity, where they felt they should not need to be afraid or change their actions, and a position of traditional femininity, where they felt they were supposed to be afraid and restrict their actions (Sandberg and Rönnblom ). A third, more radical gendered practice, points to rape culture embedded in patriarchal institutions as the source of all forms of sexual violence and the normalization of women's fear in public space.…”