The Swedish Middle Way and UN Experiences in Domestic Politics: Exploring International Welfare Feminism during Early Cold War Years

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper distinguishes Swedish feminist internationalists in the early Cold War years appointed to high positions at the United Nations (UN) whose political commitments were connected to pluralism, democracy, and a solidarity with the poor. Alva Myrdal, Agda Rössel, and Ulla Lindström were three Swedish women appointed some of the highest positions attained by women in the UN in the late 1940s and 1950s. Their stance on the interrelatedness of women’s political and economic rights is in this paper read as characteristic of the Swedish Middle Way. A special focus in the paper is on the parliamentarian debates regarding the Swedish Middle Way in which Ulla Lindström expounded on her experiences from her work as delegate to the UN. Human rights actualized by feminist internationalists included equal pay for women supported by working unions, preschool and day-care facilities for working mothers, as well as social security and social services for families in poverty, but the high-ranking positions of these women at the UN were questioned both domestically and within the UN.