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GENDER

Rejected women sue Swedish university

A group of women who are suing a Swedish university for gender discrimination have also reported Sweden’s Equality Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen – DO) to the Ombudsman of Justice (Justitieombudsmännen – JO), charging the equality agency failed to take up their case.

Published: 14 October 2009 08:51 CEST
Rejected women sue Swedish university
Lund University

The women claim they were denied admission into the psychology programme at Lund University in southern Sweden on account of their gender.

They argue that they were passed over in favour of men, who received priority treatment for admission in order to increase the number of men in the programme.

In addition to filing a lawsuit alleging illegal discrimination against the university, the 31 women have also reported the Equality Ombudsman for failing to carry out its responsibilities as the arbiter of discrimination claims in Sweden.

According to lawyers Gunnar Strömmer and Clarence Crafoord with the Stockholm-based Centre for Justice (Centrum för rättvisa), which has agreed to assist the women in the Lund case, the ombudsman refused the case because of a similar, ongoing case involving the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet – SLU).

SLU was found guilty of discrimination by the district court in Uppsala for having given preferential treatment to men seeking admission to the school’s veterinary programme.

But the ruling has been appealed by the state and is set for a new hearing later in the autumn.

According to Strömmer and Crafoord, the ombudsman “is undermining” discrimination protections for college applicants.

“Workers have unions to go in and help them pursue discrimination cases, but who is going to help young people who are discriminated against when they apply to colleges if the state’s own ombudsman against discrimination doesn’t do it,” they write in an opinion piece published on Wednesday in the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.

The two conclude that, “because in reality DO thinks it’s good to choose students based on gender – having equal numbers of each gender is a more important goal than equal rights and opportunities regardless of gender”.

According to a study carried out by the Centre for Justice, 5,400 college applicants in Sweden were subject to gender discrimination in 2009, with women being negatively affected in 95 percent of the cases.

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DISCRIMINATION

‘Sweden should apologise to Tornedalian minority’: Truth commission releases report

The Swedish state should issue a public apology to the country's Tornedalian minority, urges a truth commission set up to investigate historic wrongdoings.

Published: 15 November 2023 14:14 CET
'Sweden should apologise to Tornedalian minority': Truth commission releases report

Stockholm’s policy of assimilation in the 19th and 20th centuries “harmed the minority and continues to hinder the defence of its language, culture and traditional livelihoods,” the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Tornedalians, Kvens and Lantalaiset said in an article published in Sweden’s main daily Dagens Nyheter.

“Amends must be made in order to move forward,” it said, adding that “acknowledging the historic wrongdoings” should be a first step.

The commission, which began work in June 2020, was to submit a final report to the government on Wednesday.

Tornedalen is a geographical area in northeastern Sweden and northwestern Finland. The Tornedalian, Kven and Lantalaiset minority groups are often grouped under the name Tornedalians, who number around 50,000 in Sweden.

The commission noted that from the late 1800s, Tornedalian children were prohibited from using their mother tongue, meänkieli, in school and forced to use Swedish, a ban that remained in place until the 1960s.

From the early 1900s, some 5,500 Tornedalian children were sent away to Lutheran Church boarding schools “in a nationalistic spirit”, where their language and traditional dress were prohibited.

Punishments, violence and fagging were frequent at the schools, and the Tornedalian children were stigmatised in the villages, the commission said.

“Their language and culture was made out to be something shameful … (and) their self-esteem and desire to pass on the language to the next generation was negatively affected.”

The minority has historically made a living from farming, hunting, fishing and reindeer herding, though their reindeer herding rights have been limited over the years due to complexities with the indigenous Sami people’s herding rights.

“The minority feels that they have been made invisible, that their rights over their traditional livelihoods have been taken away and they now have no power of influence,” the commission wrote.

It recommended that the meänkieli language be promoted in schools and public service broadcasting, and the state “should immediately begin the process of a public apology”.

The Scandinavian country also has a separate Truth Commission probing discriminatory policies toward the Sami people.

That report is due to be published in 2025.

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