We S Women are calling on the government to transform gender equality work – work

Sweden is one of the most equal countries in the world.

But significant challenges remain with regard to gender equality and women’s living conditions, and for the first time in 15 years, progress is reversing in terms of the wage gap between women and men.

The women are concerned that gender equality is not a priority area for the new government and believe work must change.

International Women’s Day is an important day to draw attention to the condition of women and girls around the world. In international comparison it is easy to beat yourself up here in Sweden.

Evolution towards equality stops

We do not have discriminatory laws or official obstacles when it comes to equality and women’s rights. Women are more educated than men, we have expanded childcare and many welfare reforms that other countries can only dream of.

But we now see that progress toward equality has stalled or begun to regress in several central areas.

One of the serious developments that we see is that the life expectancy of working women is declining. While the rest of the population is living longer and longer, the evolution of women in this group is going in the wrong direction.

Many women have exhausted themselves on welfare

Many of them are women who have exhausted themselves in female-dominated social care professions and are living on a low financial footing as a result of part-time work or sick leave.

For S women, it is clear that some of the top priorities going forward are increasing funding for social care and improving working conditions in occupations dominated by women in social care.

Another area requiring significant investment is women’s pensions. A new review of women’s organizations in Sweden shows that Sweden is the worst of the Nordic countries when it comes to equal pensions and that the difference in pensions for women and men is nearly 30 percent.

The pension system must be reviewed

S-women believe that the pension system needs to be reconsidered in its entirety in order to achieve equality rather than to reinforce economic inequality.

A third critical area is breaking down the increasing mental ill health among young women. Almost twice as many 15-year-old girls have psychosomatic problems like anxiety, depression, and sleep problems (62 percent), than boys of the same age (35 percent).

Here, significant investments are needed to improve women’s mental illness care and access to the relationship between mental illness and increased use of digital media and various forms of online sexual exploitation.

Women are the most affected in times of economic crisis

These are some of the areas where S-women are working for change.

We are concerned that the policies of the new government do not see and address the problems that women face in their daily lives.

In times of economic crisis, we know that women suffer the most.

Instead of austerity policies and investments in lowering taxes for high earners, there is a need for major investments in social welfare, reforms that increase women’s pensions and other transfers that have been delayed, and a government that takes women’s increasing ill health seriously.