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Swedes should vote at 16, says top feminist

UPDATED: The co-leader of Sweden’s Feminist Initiative Party has proposed lowering the nation’s voting age in a key speech.

Published: 6 July 2015 09:54 CEST
Updated: 6 July 2015 16:12 CEST
Swedes should vote at 16, says top feminist
Gudrun Schyman in Visby this week. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

Gudrun Schyman took to the stage in Visby on the island of Gotland on Monday lunchtime, where Sweden’s annual political forum, Almedalen, was held last week.

Since the Feminist Initiative Party (FI) does not have any seats in the Swedish parliament, she was not allowed to make a speech during the official conference, which formally drew to a close on Sunday with Sweden’s Liberal Party dominating the agenda.

But her first appearance on the fringe of the festival has nevertheless hit the Swedish headlines, after she used it to lobby for a lower voting age in Sweden, where people currently cannot go to the polls until they are 18, a move she announced over the weekend to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN).

“It's too late. You can be 21 or 22 years old before you are voting for the first time,” she told DN.

“We need to lower the voting age so that the average age when voting for the first time is 18 years. This is an important democratic issue,” the FI leader added.

Earlier in the week when asked by the TT news agency if young people were really mature enough to vote at the age of 16, she said: “Research shows that [they are]. People who are aged between 16 and 20 make just as unwise or wise decisions as older people.”

READ ALSO: The Local at Almedalen 2015

Schyman has previously caused controversy at Almedalen and famously burned 100,000 kronor in a protest about the gender pay gap in Sweden in 2010.

While her country has a global reputation for championing women's rights, the Feminist Initiative Party argues that Sweden's image as a tolerant, equal society is not a reality. 

Schyman's party has recently been looking at the recent experience of Scotland, where 16-year-olds were given the chance to participate in last year's referendum on whether or not the country should remain part of the United Kingdom.

Sweden’s Green Party has also previously mooted the idea of lowering the voting age in Sweden by two years.

Other issues raised by the FI at Almedalen include its concerns about Sweden exporting weapons to countries with dictatorships and worries that the Nordic nation could end up joining Nato, a move that the party is strongly opposed to.

READ ALSO: Who's who in Swedish politics

While more than 20,000 politicians, economists, entrepreneurs, campaigners and journalists flocked to the Swedish island of Gotland for Almedalen last week, the medieval city of Visby has now largely emptied out, except for FI supporters and residents.

The Local live blogged every party leader’s speech and brought you analysis on some of the key national and international issues being discussed at the conference. Click here to find all the coverage in our special Almedalen 2015 section.

For members

INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won’t spark a government crisis

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 18 May 2024 09:22 CEST
Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won't spark a government crisis

Hej,

News that the Sweden Democrats are operating a far-right troll factory – which among other things the party uses to smear political opponents as well as its supposed allies – has caused probably the biggest rift yet between them and the three other parties that make up Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The leaders of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals all strongly criticised the Sweden Democrats’ blatant violation of the so-called “respect clause” in their Tidö collaboration agreement – the clause that states that the four parties should speak respectfully of each other in the media.

But after crisis talks held on Thursday, the conflict appears to be dying down.

The Sweden Democrats hit out strongly at the TV4 Kalla Fakta documentary where the troll factory was revealed, calling it a smear campaign and disinformation, but simultaneously went as far as to confirm that they do run anonymous social media accounts for which they refused to apologise.

They did say sorry to the Tidö parties for including them in the smear campaigns, and promised to remove some of the posts that had offended the other three parties, plus reassign a couple of members of staff to other duties until they’ve been given training on the Tidö “respect clause”.

But that doesn’t remove the fact that they vowed to continue the anonymous social media accounts whose existence they had prior to the documentary consistently denied, or the fact that some of the social media posts shared not only vague anti-immigration content, but white power propaganda.

The Liberals took the row the furthest, with Liberal leader Johan Pehrson describing people in his party as skitförbannade – pissed off as hell. He said ahead of the crisis meeting that they would demand that the Sweden Democrats cease all anonymous posting, which the latter rejected.

The party had two choices: walk out of the government collaboration and possibly spark a snap election, or walk back its strong words ahead of the meeting and wait for it to blow over.

They chose a kind of middle way, and called for an inquiry to be launched into banning political parties from operating anonymous social media accounts. The Social Democrats immediately accused the Liberals of trying to “bury the issue in an inquiry” – a classic Swedish political method of indecisive conflict avoidance which the Social Democrats themselves are well familiar with.

The Christian Democrats and Moderates both said that the Sweden Democrats had accepted their criticism and welcomed the party’s reshuffling of staff within its communications department, adding that it still had to prove its commitment to the Tidö agreement going forward.

So why isn’t this causing a bigger government crisis?

We asked Evelyn Jones, a politics reporter for the Dagens Nyheter daily, to come on the Sweden in Focus podcast to explain it to us:

“The Sweden Democrats are the biggest party in this coalition, even though they’re not part of the government. So the government really needs them. It’s hard for them to just stop cooperating with the Sweden Democrats,” she said.

“The cooperation between the government parties and the Sweden Democrats has been going pretty smoothly since the last election – more smoothly than a lot of people thought. This is probably the biggest crisis so far, but how big it is, is hard to say.”

You can listen to the full interview with her and the rest of the Sweden in Focus podcast here. 

In other news

If you are a descendant of a Sweden-born person and would like to find out more about them, there are ways to do that. I wrote this week about how to research your Swedish ancestry.

That guide was prompted by my interview with the chair of a community history group in a small parish in north-central Sweden, which has tried to get to the bottom of rumours that US mega star Taylor Swift’s ancestors hail from their village. I had so much fun writing this article.

The EU elections will be held on June 9th, but advance voting begins next week in Sweden. And poll cards are already being sent out, so if you’re eligible to vote you should receive yours soon.

Sweden’s consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in April, below 4.0 percent for the first time in two years, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates.

Sweden’s four-party government bloc has broken with the other parties in a parliamentary committee on public service broadcasting, adding what the opposition complains are “radically changed” proposals. How shocking are they?

Many people move to Sweden because of their partner’s career. Perhaps you’re one of these so-called “trailing spouses”. I’ve been asking readers in this situation how they’re settling in, and will have an article for you next week. There’s still time to answer our survey to share your experience.

Thanks for reading.

Have a good weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

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