Co-Optation and Feminism in the Nordic Region – ‘Gender-Friendly’ Welfare States, ‘Nordic Exceptionalism’ and Intersectionality

In this paper, which is part of a study on feminisms in the Nordic region (Keskinen, Stoltz & Mulinari, eds., forthc.); I discuss the usefulness of co-optation as a methodological tool when analyzing the complexities of controversial politics of inclusion and exclusion in feminisms in the Nordic region. Feminism is a community of belonging, an idea and a political project and as such, it is a floating signifier. Power relations amongst self-defined feminists can influence when and how politics of inclusion and exclusion become controversial. The historical collaboration between the state and social movements in the Nordic region makes co-optation a fundamental issue, which researchers on feminisms in the Nordic region have rarely explored theoretically or empirically. This is unfortunate, since feminist political scientists have long argued for the fruitfulness of the nexus between on the one hand democracy and on the other gender and sexual equality. ‘Co-optation’ can capture the ambiguities that feminist scholars and activists express when considering persistent metaphors of ‘woman/women’ or ‘gender-friendly’ welfare states (Hernes, 1987; Kantola and Verloo, 2018; Borchorst and Siim, 2002). These metaphors indicate a form of feminist success, whereas the Nordic welfare states simultaneously have reinforced democratic deficits and serious exclusions by benefiting certain gendered groups more, while leaving others still disadvantaged. Postcolonial, anti-racist and indigenous (Sámi) feminists have been critical of metaphors of ‘Nordic exceptionalism’ and have drawn attention to this point in relation to the social locations of refugees, migrants and indigenous populations. This emphasizes the importance of paying attention to intersectional inequalities in feminisms in the Nordic region. The use of intersectional approaches by white feminists, especially in Europe, has simultaneously also been accused of being whitewashed and co-opted. This raises the question, what we mean by co-optation. Recent feminist studies on co-optation have focused on feminist struggles in the context of neoliberalism, nationalism and conservatism (Eschle and Maiguashca, 2018; de Jong and Kimm, 2017). Fraser (2013) argued that feminism has been co-opted by neoliberalism, whereas others (Bhandar and Ferreira da Silva, 2013) find such an analysis unfortunate in its Eurocentrism since it is based on a narrow analysis of a few specific cases. In this paper, I argue that we need to be careful and stringent in how we separate and combine firstly, an analytical approach to co-optation with secondly, a normative political approach to co-optation. This is important if we want to uncover the complexities of movement outcomes as consisting of a variety of possible effects, intended as well as unintended, leading to logical as well as contradicting effects, creating conflict or cooperation. Paying attention to context and relating this to normative approaches in studies of co-optation point at a variety of avenues to understand co-optation, which often are mixed-up in unfortunate ways. This can, if not treated carefully, lead to narratives about feminism that are insensitive to the diverse genealogies and socio-historical roots of feminism as a transnational movement, which in turn can hinder the development of transversal activism within and across transnational feminist solidarity movements.