Citizenship and social order: gender politics in twentieth-century Norway and Sweden

This article is about the dilemmas embedded in the economic status of married women which have caused some of the main controversies within twentieth-century feminism. In spite of the undoubted success of equal status politics, no final solution to the ambivalent economic position of married women has been found. Even in advanced liberal democracies women are not necessarily included fully in the basic civil right of economic liberty, while their position outside the market economy is either not recognised or is undervalued. These dilemmas are a feature of all industrialised democracies. Nonetheless, the way in which they have been conceived and managed during the twentieth century has differed a great deal between countries. This article uses the case of Norway and Sweden to explore some of these differences.