Introduction

A state with ‘feminism without feminists’ is how Sweden at times has been pictured (Gelb 1989, in Florin and Nilsson 1999: 64–5). In a country as organised as Sweden, extra-parliamentary groups and other protest groups seem to be absorbed by the state and there is no place for militant feminism. Since the 1960s the Swedish state has partly integrated what has been called a ‘Swedish gender equality discourse’. This led to a number of changes in laws, a Ministry of Equal Status in 1976, a Parliamentary Commission on Equal Status in the same year, and the creation of the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman in 1980. It has been argued that a number of ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and feminist agents were necessary to spread ideas on gender equality and to politicise the issue (Florin and Nilsson 1999: 65, 73). However, this gender equality policy mainly focused on women's right to work and equal pay; issues of sexuality were less debated.

This chapter will show that there was more or less unanimous support among the feminists in the established political parties for seeing prostitution as patriarchal oppression of women. Opinions have diverged on how to deal with this question, whether non-criminalisation, criminalisation of both parties or just criminalising the john was the right way to proceed. To legalise prostitution has never been an issue among feminists in parliament during the past thirty years.