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Enthusiastic Proselytisers: Translating the Swedish Gender Policy Model in Cold War United States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2022
Abstract
In the early 1960s, the US President's Commission on the Status of Women analysed Swedish gender policies with an interest in securing social and economic justice for American women. This largely overlooked investigation ultimately led to the integration of Swedish policy goals and strategies into the commission's recommendations, extending the impact of a Swedish model beyond mere rhetorical functions. This case indicates how, in the context of Cold War bipolarisation, transnational labour networks facilitated ‘modellisation’ by bolstering the trendiness of Swedish examples and the receptivity of American actors. Crucial was Esther Peterson of the US Women's Bureau, who served as a proselytiser of Swedish ideas, thereby driving a spontaneous and highly contingent translation of these policies into US-compatible proposals. The role of Peterson suggests a need for a greater recognition of the agendas of specific interest groups when historicising the creation and international circulation of a Swedish model.
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References
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76 D. Goldberg to E. Peterson, 3 Oct. 1961, LC, I:193; ‘Rörlig Svensk Arbetsmarknad Imponerar på USA-minister’, Undated, LC, I:193. Author's translation.
77 D. Goldberg to E. Peterson, 3 Oct. 1961, LC, I:193.
78 D. Goldberg to P. Van Deldan, 3 Oct. 1961, LC, I:193.
79 D. Goldberg to E. Peterson, 3 Oct. 1961, LC, I:193.
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82 Maurine Neuberger (1907–2000) served as Senator from Oregon from 1960 to 1967. A Democrat, Neuberger focused on protections for consumers and women workers, including authoring an amendment to the 1964 Revenue Act that would facilitate deducting expenses for child care from income taxes.
83 PCSW, ‘Proceedings’, 29 June 1962, Box 14, JFK; M. Murray to N. Miglionico, 12 Sep. 1962, SL, 888.
84 S. Winship to State, no. 883, 2 May 1962, NARA, RG84, UD3195.
85 PCSW, Proceedings, 16–17 June 1962, JFK, Box 4.
86 PCSW, New and Expanded Services in Other Countries, no. 1, May 1962, JFK, Box 8.
87 PCSW, Summary of Meeting, no. II-4, 28 May 1962, JFK, Box 9.
88 PCSW, Personal and Property Rights, no. II-26, JFK, Box 10.
89 Arne Geijer (1910–79) was trained as a metalworker, becoming the chairman of the Swedish Steelworkers Union from 1948 to 1956 and chairman of the LO from 1956 to 1973. Geijer also served as president of the ICFTU from 1957 to 1965, which necessitated frequent contact with American labour leaders.
90 Bertil Kugelberg (1900–91) originally acted as an assistant director of SAF in 1928, before being elevated to full director in 1946, a post which he held until his retirement in 1966. Kugelberg and Geijer were professionally and personally close.
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93 Kugelberg's formulation echoed the ILO's Convention 100.
94 PCSW, Proceedings, 1 Oct. 1962, JFK, Box 4, p. 31, 39.
95 Ibid., p. 13.
96 Sam A. Morgenstein (1913–2008) was the technical secretary of the PCSW's Committee on Private Employment, having come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
97 PCSW, Proceedings, 1 Oct. 1962, JFK, Box 4, p. 44.
98 Ibid., pp. 42–3, 46, 49.
99 Ibid., pp. 52, 54.
100 Maxine Cheshire, ‘Equal Pay Will Come Gradually: Free Speech Is Democratic’, Washington Post, 3 Oct. 1962.
101 J. Kaukonen to State, no. A-301, 9 Oct. 1962, NARA, RG84, UD3195.
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103 President's Commission on the Status of Women, American Women, 212.
104 Committee on Civil and Political Rights, Report of the Committee on Civil and Political Rights to the President's Commission on the Status of Women, October 1963 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964).
105 Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity, 233; Zelman, Women, Work, and National Policy, 30.
106 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ‘The Equal Pay Act of 1963’, available at https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/history/35th/thelaw/epa.html (last accessed 1 May 2019). For reactions to the EPA in the labour movement, see Gabin, Nancy F., Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1935–1975 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 190–1Google Scholar; Peterson and Conkling, Restless, 110.
107 President's Commission on the Status of Women, American Women: The Report of the President's Commission on the Status of Women and Other Publications of the Commission, eds. Margaret Mead and Frances Balgley Kaplan (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1965), 4, 11.
108 Perhaps connected to Peterson's influence, reports about Sweden's lack of significant female leadership in government do not seem to have been discussed to the same degree as the labour market positives. J. Kaukonen to State, no. A-634, 18 Jan. 1963, NARA, RG84, UD3195.
109 PCSW, Proceedings, 18 May 1962, JFK, Box 14.
110 PCSW, Proceedings, 29 June 1962, JFK, Box 14.
111 Notions of Swedish licentiousness, one of the great midcentury detractions of a Swedish social model, were notably absent from PCSW records, a contrast to the extensive research noting the image's prevalence in the United States. This absence serves as further evidence that a policy model was detachable from a social model. See Marklund, Carl, ‘Hot Love and Cold People: Sexual Liberalism as Political Escapism in Radical Sweden’, Nordeuropaforum, 19, 1 (2009), 83–101Google Scholar; Hale, Frederick, ‘Time for Sex in Sweden: Enhancing the Myth of the “Swedish Sin” during the 1950s’, Scandinavian Studies, 75, 3 (2003), 351–74Google Scholar; Glover and Marklund, ‘Arabian Nights’.
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113 PCSW, Proceedings, 1 Oct. 1962, JFK, Box 4, p. 44.
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118 Louise Sweeney, ‘Grandmotherly Esther Peterson: “The Most Dangerous Thing since Genghis Khan”’, The Christian Science Monitor, 17 July 1979; Cobble, The Other Women's Movement, 174; United States Interdepartmental Committee on the Status of Women, American Women, 13.
119 As Nancy Woloch notes, part of the commission's lasting impact was to ‘lay the groundwork for both a feminist agenda and, before long, a new women's movement’. Woloch, Nancy, Women and the American Experience: A Concise History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 332Google Scholar.
120 Quoted in Johan Östling et al., ‘The History of Knowledge and the Circulation of Knowledge’, in Johan Östling et al., eds., Circulation of Knowledge: Explorations in the History of Knowledge (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2018), 9–33.
121 Sandlund, Maj-Britt, The Status of Women in Sweden: Report to the United Nations, 1968 (Stockholm: The Swedish Institute, 1968)Google Scholar.
122 Gruberg, Martin, ‘Official Commissions on the Status of Women: A Worldwide Movement’, International Review of Education, 19, 1 (1973), 140, 144–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Sweden Is “Experimental Laboratory” for Studying the Status of Women’, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Mar. 1969.
123 Glover, National Relations, fn. 570.
124 Logue, ‘The Swedish Model’, 165.
125 Ibid., 167.