STOCKHOLM Feminists in Sweden may form a political party to lobby for women’s rights in elections in 2006, potentially taking votes away from mainstream parties.
Speculation was ignited by the defection this week from the Left Party – part of the governing coalition – of Sweden’s most controversial feminist politician, who recently proposed a tax on all men to cover the social cost of violence against women.
Gudrun Schyman, who stepped down as Left Party leader in 2003 after being prosecuted for tax dodging and who once confessed to being an alcoholic, is still one of the most charismatic figures in Swedish politics with a strong following among women.
She has avoided saying outright that she would form a new party. She told reporters she was defecting from the Left – but keeping her seat in Parliament – “so that I can be free to take part in the debate” about a new women’s party.
Other leading feminists were less tentative, with Sweden’s best-known feminist intellectual, Maria-Pia Boethius, saying: “I estimate there will be a feminist party in Sweden in 2005. Talks are going on, and I am taking part in them myself.”
Mainstream political parties claim strong feminist credentials in a country with women in charge of half the government ministries, the powerful trade union federation and the industry lobby and in top jobs in the Lutheran Church.
The mainstream vote is already divided. The Social Democrats, who have ruled Sweden for six of the last seven decades, depend on their Left Party and Green Party allies to push legislation through Parliament.
They face a growing challenge on the center-right from four parties known collectively as the “bourgeois” bloc. There is also the threat that an anti-European Union party set up for the EU elections this year, the “June List,” will run in 2006.
The respected Dagens Nyheter newspaper wrote that if Schyman did start a new women’s party, “she could not have chosen a better moment, with many women voters wavering between parties.”
The development could be the “kiss of death” for the Left and take away votes from the Social Democrats, which are struggling to hold onto female voters disenchanted with falling standards in state health care and education despite sky-high income taxes, the paper said.
Another prominent Swedish feminist and promoter of the Women’s Party idea, Ebba-Witt Brattstrom, said such a group could garner “as much as 15 percent” of votes, which would make it the third biggest party after the Social Democrats and main opposition Moderates – a tall order for a single-issue party.
But Brattstrom said such a party could succeed only if it were led by someone other than a leftist like Schyman.
“A feminist party that doesn’t want to be seen as just a Left Party splinter group must be led by people with a different background,” she told Svenska Dagbladet newspaper. “Otherwise we are talking about a 5 percent party.”
Parties need 4 percent of the national vote to enter Parliament.
A survey published Thursday showed that the Social Democratic party and its allies still have the backing of a majority of voters but opposition parties have gained ground. Support for the Social Democrats, led by Prime Minister Goran Persson, edged up to 37.9 percent, the November survey showed, up 0.2 percentage points from the previous poll in May.
