The #MeToo Movement, Sexual Violence, and the Law in Sweden

Introduction

In the fall of 2017, the international #MeToo movement engulfed Sweden, a country known for its progressive politics and institutionalized commitment to gender equality. As in many other countries, women publicly disclosed experiences of sexual harassment and violence. The mass disclosures of sexual violence were seen as a "shame" for Swedish society, a country that has shaped an international image as a country committed to gender equality (TV4Nyheterna 2017; see also Martinsson et al. 2016). The #MeToo movement challenged the dominant perception of Swedish gender exceptionalism and clearly illuminated that "yes, it happens in Sweden, #too" (Nordberg 2017).

I will analyze how the #MeToo movement unfolded in Sweden, particularly how the movement illuminated the paradox between gender equality and the continued vulnerability and sexual victimization of women. The high number of sexual violence incidents unearthed during the #MeToo movement in Sweden was framed as a stark contrast to the international image of Sweden (and its Nordic neighbors) as a "gender-equal utopia" (Fiig 2008). While a positive and active response to the movement from the government reveals the power of feminist activism in Sweden to influence legislating and policymaking, the use of defamation law against women who named individual offenders literally and symbolically silences survivors of sexual violence. The criticism directed towards anti-violence feminist activist movements like #MeToo—especially these legal consequences of speaking out against individual perpetrators—highlights a tension in Sweden between feminist activism and the law. I argue that the #MeToo movement and its aftermath in Sweden reveals how collective action against sexual violence can overcome strong resistance to feminist legal and social change, but fundamental barriers to speaking out against sexual violence remain.

The data in this article come from forty-eight in-depth interviews I conducted with feminist anti-violence activists and rape crisis advocates, criminal justice professionals, political elites, and state bureaucrats during fifteen months of fieldwork from 2017–2019, in addition to a discourse analysis of parliamentary documents and news media sources focused on the #MeToo movement and political debates around sexual violence and the law. All translations from the original Swedish to English are my own.

Saying #MeToo in Sweden

The #MeToo movement came to Sweden in October 2017. Like the United States, powerful men were accused of sexual violence they had been perpetrating for years with impunity. In one of the most prominent examples, the husband of a member of the Swedish Academy was accused—and ultimately convicted—of sexual assault¹. As a result of the scandal and the evidence that the institution of the Swedish Academy itself enabled Jean-Claude Arnault to commit this abuse, several members of the Academy resigned from their lifetime posts (Anderson 2018).

Although high-profile cases were reported widely in the media, much of the Swedish #MeToo movement focused on organizational patterns of abuse and harassment in the workplace rather than on individual men (Pollack 2019). The first widespread movement came from women in the theatre and film industry. The women shared stories under the hashtag #tystnadtagning, or "silent shoot," to emphasize the institutional silencing of victim-survivors of sexual violence. The movement caught on rapidly, as organizers in industries and occupations throughout Sweden—from the legal profession to the medical fields to the media—collected and distributed stories of sexual harassment and violence women experienced within their workplaces. In addition to the individual stories, organizers wrote petitions against sexual harassment and collected thousands of signatures to accompany each petition (Hansson et al. 2020; Pollack 2019). In the end, over 100,000 Swedish women shared a story or signed on to a petition (Hansson et al. 2020). The petitions were printed in the most popular Swedish newspapers, calling on the government and influential leaders within their industries to address sexual harassment in the workplace (Askanius and Møller Hartley 2019).

The focus on the workplace as a site of sexual harassment and violence is particularly revealing in the Swedish context. Policy initiatives have focused for decades on women's workforce participation as the main driver of gender equality (Tollin 2011). Through policies like mandatory parental...