Country seen as champion of equal rights faces reckoning after senior politician says she felt compelled to quit
Increasing hate, threats and harassment against female politicians are scaring women away from public life and forcing them to censor themselves, the Swedish government’s equality agency has said, warning that this poses a “big threat to democracy.”
Women’s safety in politics has come under heightened scrutiny in the Scandinavian country since October, when Anna-Karin Hatt resigned as leader of the Centre party after only five months in office, citing hate and threats.
“To constantly feel like you need to look over your shoulder and [to] not feel completely safe, not even at home … I am affected by it much more deeply than I thought I would [be],” she said at the time.
Is this a disparity in treatment or response?
The 2025 politicians’ security survey, carried out by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, found that 26.3% of female elected representatives reported being exposed to threats and harassment last year because of their position. The equivalent figure for men was 23.6%.
About the same levels: the difference could be random noise.
When it came to feeling vulnerable, the gender gap was markedly larger, at 32.7% of women reporting such feelings compared with 24% of men.
That indicates a stronger response.
Maybe this concerns right-wing extremist threatening everyone more than inequality?
- Republican lawmakers are leaving office out of fear of the party’s base
- At least 11 Indiana Republicans were targeted with threats or swatting attacks
- Marjorie Taylor Greene plans to resign after MAGA threats
Everyone’s getting heat from far-right dickheads.
Context: Centerpartiet (“The Centre party”) has been rather uniquely targeted by the troll factories (russian / right-wing) here in Sweden since they’re the only non-left party in our parliament saying NO to cooperating/ruling together with our fascist party (“Sverigedemokraterna”). They’re the good economic-right without the authoritarianism and white power stuff.
And yes, it seems the level of hatred was a lot higher for the last woman party leader (Lööf) and now Hatt. In between them there was a male for a while who was mostly anonymous.
Yeah, but Demirok was constantly the butt end of jokes. The fact that he was so non-descript was a detriment to the party.
Funny that you mention him in passing without even knowing the name. He’s just “the guy”. Pretty funny and fitting honestly.
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There’s a certain irony in someone using a racist dog whistle complaining about fascism.
I’d have caught it sooner if anyone had reported it. Sorry about that. 😟
For the curious:
Man wtf. People have to actively try to be this stupidly hateful.
Those new countries will be taken over by moneyed interests in a heartbeat.
I wonder why women and LGBTQ+ people would be so uncomfortable in Sweden.
Quit your bullshit. The person who murdered Ing-Marie Wieselgren (national coordinator for psychiatry) in front of Annie Lööf (leader of Centerpartiet) in 2022 was Theodor Engström. This article is news because Anna-Karin Hatt (leader of Centerpartiet) quit a couple of weeks back, in response to online threats.
If you look at the incidence of violence against women in Europe, there is no correlation with immigration. Sure, Sweden is ranked as number 2, which seems bad and you might infer that it has something to do with demographics. Just one problem - Finland is number 1, with 1/10th of Sweden’s immigration. Denmark and Hungary are also really high up. You can try to draw your own conclusions but a clear correlation to immigration is a hard sell.
Nearly 63% of all rapists in Sweden are immigrants or children of immigrants. In Finland, Immigrants are three times more likely to rape a woman that Finnish people. In Finland, second generation migrants are labeled as Finnish, so I bet the statistic is even higher. These are also only rape statistics and not sexual harassment, which has much less data, but we can see would follow this trend.
Could be bit of both. Sweden has always been more right wing than their Scandinavian brethren. Their far right was strong during World War 2, and they have a far right in a coalition government at the moment. But on the one hand, Sweden allowed too many immigrants who share the same attitude as their own far right.
Two things can both be true at the same time.
Out of curiosity, what does the diagram represent? I wonder what value has increased to about two thirds of 18% (and what is the 18%) between 1945 and 2015?
1945 - I can tell what happened over here on that year. Tens of thousands of Estonians took boats and sailed to Sweden, because they knew that Stalin’s regime had extremely unpleasant surprises waiting for them. Without a clue about the context, I would guess that’s the blue bar in 1945.
Also, I think your graph is missing the point. Lööf was sure as hell unsettled when psychiatrist Ing-Marie Wieselgren was killed at a political festival, by a guy who arguably intended to kill Lööf.
Wikipedia tells us a bit more:
After stabbing Wieselgren, the attacker was tackled by a pensioner and was shortly thereafter arrested by police.[5] The arrested perpetrator was a 33-year-old man who had previously participated in events organized by the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement and had written for the neo-Nazi newspaper Nordfront.
So, apparently the motive was political, but I don’t think you expected it was this one.
Polarization is really stupid, it makes people talk, campaign and vote about identity issues (parties start to have ultrafans who want to beat each other up), when their best interest would be served by discussing other topics. Fortunately the Swedish electoral system does not support unhinged levels of polarization.
The graph represents the proportion of Swedish population not of Swedish descent. As you allow people with such a different culture and outlook on women and LGBTQ+ peoples into the country, you begin to see the same patterns of violence and hate from their home countries.
I would put it differently.
The graph represents immigration. That is another topic, if you read the title carefully (see: “public life”).
Recent / notable incidents of violence against women in politics, in Sweden, can be fairly blamed on far-right actors who are (perhaps by coincidence or perhaps not) also failing to discuss immigration normally, because discussing things rationally is not their slice of bread. Some parties’ ultra-fans have a culture of threatening and intimidation.
I know it first hand without being in Sweden. Here in Estonia, we also have a party of that sort, with all the bells and whistles (anti-vaxx, pro-Kremlin, anti-immigration¹ and of course pro-authoritarianism). And their supporters can’t argue with a person much more often than an ordinary party’s supporters. I sincerely hope that party goes below the election threshold soon. They already split because of internal culture (failure to tolerate disagreements).
¹ anti accepting Ukrainian refugees, since there is nearly no other immigration coming here, unlike Sweden which has been considered an attractive destination
P.S. I should note that Sweden has its share of integration problems (which they try to solve, and will likely pull the brakes if they cannot), but as a result of immigration, Sweden experiences less of the demographic problems which press Eastern Europe (read: our population pyramids in Eastern Europe are top-heavy, predicting serious issues with financing of public services in future, their population pyramid in Sweden is relatively square).
this was always the argument in the US when taking with people regarding all the cool things Sweden instituted - “but they are culturally contiguous, and that’s what makes it work.”
…in a melting pot, you have to account for the existence of all these extreme viewpoints, and have some kind of response. Those things that aren’t accounted for simply spill out into the populous, and become everyone’s problem.
The Swedish system is unfortunately collapsing under it’s own weight partially due to immigrants taking more than they put in. The rapid influx of people has put a strain on all factors of public services from healthcare to school.
Yeah… …I really love some of the core Swedish ideals, and it’s sad to see this happening. I really hope that Sweden is able to generate an effective response to the incoming ideologies without sacrificing their own ideals.
When people get too soft, times get hard (bullies win when people are too soft). A genuine balance needs to be struck, which requires a lot of personal processing by many people, as well as time for the resultant answers to spread through the culture. Sweden may need to limit immigration in the mean time to give time for that to occur.
