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About a hundred years ago, a great democratic breakthrough took place in the Western world. Around 1920, not only all men but also all women were granted the right to vote in countries such as the United States, Canada, Sweden and Denmark. Great Britain gained universal suffrage for women in 1928 and France in 1945.
But equal suffrage did not immediately mean equal influence.
Even long after women gained the right to vote, they lagged in terms of education and presence in socially important professions. Politics, the judiciary, journalism, churches, universities, the medical profession. Men dominated everywhere long after women had received equal opportunities to influence politics.
But with the impact of modern feminism in the 1970s, everything changed. Now women were supposed to educate themselves, they were supposed to have careers, they were supposed to support themselves. They were also supposed to identify themselves as something more than just women, wives and mothers. And over time, women also entered more advanced professions.
And today we know what it looks like in many Western countries. Women are not at all lagging behind when it comes to representation in universities, in politics, in the judiciary or journalism. Quite the opposite. It has long been emphasized that women are rather on the way to dominating in certain professional categories that were previously dominated by men.
The change is gradual and does not look the same in all countries. It is also a fact that women can enter a professional category but still be underrepresented at management level. The proportion of women who earn a doctorate is increasing at European universities. However, the proportion of women among professors is still significantly lower than the proportion of men. But the trend is clear: everywhere where men previously dominated, women’s presence is becoming increasingly noticeable.
Sweden is one of the countries that has been at the forefront of this development. Therefore, it is perhaps logical that an open debate has now begun in Sweden about the possible consequences of this social change.
In 2024, Erik J Olsson and Catharina Grönqvist Olsson published a well-received book entitled “The Soft State”. The title alludes to the concept of “The Deep State” which is usually used to talk about the state bureaucracy in our Western societies that tends to have its own political agenda independent of the popular will that is channeled through elected politicians.
Now the two authors have come out with a new book, “The New Matriarchy – A Survey of Feminization in the State”. This deals with how women have come to dominate among personnel in Swedish agencies and Swedish government departments.
80 percent of all Swedish government agencies have a majority of women in their staff. To some extent, this is because the professions carried out within the agencies already have a female dominance. They do not employ carpenters and plumbers at the agencies. But it is still the case that the agencies were previously dominated by men and that we also see a female dominance across the entire field at managerial levels. In 55 percent of the agencies, over 60 percent of the staff are female. Only in 20 percent of the agencies is there a corresponding male dominance of over 60 percent men.
Some interesting examples are the Swedish “Equality Authority” where 85 percent of the employees are women. Sweden also has an authority called the “Discrimination Ombudsman” which preserves citizens’ right not to be discriminated against in working life. It has 79 percent female employees.
Of the Swedish government departments, there is not even one that has a majority of male employees. The Swedish Ministry of Culture is 73 percent female, the Ministry of Health and Welfare 73 percent female. And so it goes: the Ministry of Education 70 percent women, the Ministry of Justice 67 percent, the Ministry of Labor 67 percent, the Ministry of Climate and Enterprise 61 percent. The lowest proportion of women is at the Ministry of Finance, where they make up 56 percent of the employees.
If you look at the entire Swedish state, and thus include the Police, Defense and other traditionally male-dominated agencies, we have a female dominance of 53 percent. And the proportion has decreased slightly since the record year of 2023. The sudden decrease is probably due to the fact that Sweden, like other European countries, has invested large resources in recent years in the armament of both the military and the police, areas where men still have a relatively strong position.
In 1980, the proportion of women in the state was 40.3 percent. It was in 2008 that women caught up. And since then, their proportion has only increased, except for the last two years when defense and the judiciary have hired more personnel.
And then the question is what this does to society. And this is a potentially extremely controversial question. Because if in any way one allows oneself to discuss alleged female dominance and perhaps even describe it as problematic, one risks being accused of misogyny. But the question must of course be asked. The equal presence of women in public society is a new phenomenon in our Western societies. Traditionally, women functioned as “the other sex,” as Simone de Beauvoir said. But that can hardly be considered to be the case anymore. At least not in the same way.
According to the two authors Erik J Olsson and Catharina Grönqvist Olsson, organizations are affected by the fact that there is a female majority of employees and managers in such a way that what they call “female values” and “female thinking” then have a completely different impact. In the long run, this means that an entire society gives a different importance to questions, perspectives and values that previously had to give way to typically male values and male thinking.
And here it is easy to object that not all women are the same or that not all men think the same. And that is of course true. But the authors of the book base their reasoning on broad psychological and sociological research that is dedicated to describing average values. It is therefore possible, the researchers say, to identify thought figures that are typically female and typically male. And these are thought figures that appear in different cultures. And just as there are many individual women who are taller than the average man, it is also an indisputable fact that men on average have a greater body height than women.
And it is easy to forget today that our Western societies—and most societies around the world—have traditionally been shaped by men and male values. A century ago, men dominated politics. Men shaped journalism, academia, and the judicial system.
For a time, we may have lived in a situation where a certain balance existed between the masculine and the feminine. And perhaps we still find ourselves in that state of balance. Male values persist, and men remain active in politics and public administration, but women have also entered the scene; this may well have elevated the status of what we regard as “softer” perspectives—equality, fairness, care, and openness.
However, according to Olsson and Grönqvist, Sweden—and above all the tax-funded public sector within the state and municipalities—has become so heavily influenced by women that a “female mindset” has now become the norm.
The authors illustrate, among other things, how the police and the military describe their own missions. It is no longer a given that the primary goal—for the police, to combat crime at any cost and in any situation, or for the military, to repel hostile attacks—is the overriding priority. Instead, the primary purpose of the operation may simply be to exist within a pleasant work environment.
The authors also demonstrate how perspectives typically regarded in the modern world as “left-wing” have become perspectives shaped by characteristically female priorities. Immigration, concern for the climate, gender equality, and social justice are issues championed by modern left-wing parties, yet they also align with a typically female mindset. And it is therefore no coincidence that the polarization we see today across the Western world—between, on the one hand, a broad Left encompassing both Marxists and left-liberals, and on the other, a new conservative Right—is also a polarization between women and men.
As for the theoretical references in the book, it should be noted that the authors base their arguments on extensive psychological and sociological research. It is not a matter of all men or all women being a certain way; rather, it concerns measurable and verifiable tendencies.
And one of these tendencies is that men and women differ in their views on morality and ethics. Men like to refer to what can be called an “ethics of justice”, where we accept that people have different conditions for getting by in life and therefore also differ in terms of success and life outcomes. The important thing is that all individuals, or perhaps all cultures, civilizations, have the same formal conditions to succeed. That is what justice is. And justice also consists in the fact that those individuals who have better conditions to succeed in their lives are also allowed to do so.
Women, on the contrary, tend to think in accordance with an “ethics of care”. Then the focus is on all people being equally well off regardless of what natural conditions they possess. This also makes it unbearable that some individuals or cultures are more successful than others. It makes it unbearable that people can be excluded from a successful community. It becomes fundamentally unbearable for a nation to limit solidarity and care for its own citizens because all people throughout the world have the same natural right to care and prosperity.
It is important to understand that these are two different ways of thinking that men and women tend to embrace spontaneously and organically. This is why it becomes difficult for the two camps to discuss with each other. These are not ideological positions based on objective and factual analysis, but rather spontaneous patterns of thought.
The question of the impact that women’s successes may have on our societies is multifaceted and interesting, but it is also politically controversial. We usually have no major problems with arguing that male values can be problematic and that societies should not be characterized to an excessive extent by purely male values. Do we dare to start thinking along similar lines when it comes to women and female values?