The significance of feminist infrastructure: #MeToo in the construction industry and the green industry in Sweden

Abstract

To better understand the interplay between digital activism and feminist infrastructure, this study investigates #MeToo activism in the Swedish construction industry and green industry. Both are industries in transition characterized by a dissonance between formal incentives, that encourage women and others to work in environments previously dominated by white men, and the informal power structures hosting a toxic masculinity. Based on media texts and interviews with key persons from the industries, the article situates #MeToo in a local context and shows how it was embedded in a supportive social, cultural, and technical infrastructure. In both industries, at the time of #MeToo this feminist infrastructure was already in place consisting of: an awareness of the problem of sexual harassment and abuse, knowledge of feminist explanatory models, established feminist online networks, and a supportive feminist culture, which together with widespread digital and feminist literacy became instrumental in the organization of the movement. Social media connected activists and created a critical mass by supporting the uniting of conflicting identity positions around shared differences. The established feminist infrastructure meant that the #MeToo activism, by articulating a widespread affective dissonance, pushed open doors that were already half open and forced them wide. This can explain some of the movement's success in Sweden.

Whatever happened to the girl in #MeToo?

“…These were often published in the daily press where narratives of SSSR were accompanied by lists of signatories and manifests pointing out problems and suggestions for how workplaces should change to prevent SSSR. The local feminist infrastructures (Hansson et al, 2023) and previous forms of feminist activist practice -like the remediated feminist petition -were integral for #MeToo activism in Sweden. Even though the growing practices of digital feminist activism in the 2010s were global, their forms and organisation varied across contexts.…”