Below are the 4 most recent journal entries recorded in timati's InsaneJournal:

Friday, November 13th, 2009
1:28 pm	The Women's Movement and the New Woman The 1930s was a period of growth and achievement for organized women in Sweden. The older, mostly middle-class feminist organizations, which included the Frederika Bremer Federation (FBF) and the more radical Swedish Women's Federation of the Left ( SKV) were joined by the new Professional Women's Federation (YKR) and the Swedish branch of the Open Door International. Professional women, from teachers to clerks and telegraph operators, formed unions in this period, and, not wanting to be left out, so did housewives. Social Democratic women experienced dynamic growth, with membership increasing from 8,200 in 1930 to 28,000 at the end of 1939. The party as a whole, including collective membership through trade unions, counted 30,000 women, or 12 percent of total membership, in 1929, and 82,300, or 19 percent, in 1938. Although women's influence in the male political arena did not grow in proportion to their numbers, women made every effort to show that they took their citizenship seriously and fully intended to share with men the responsibilities that it implied. Original Thesis help and cheap assistance online. Get thesis written by professional thesis writers! They developed strategies identified with late nineteenth-century popular movements, "protesting, lobbying, and struggling for their rights in the state." Organized women were united in condemning the "masculine culture" that denied women's right or ability to participate in political life, as reactionary or fascist. Changes in popular cultural images of women in the 1930s furthered their cause. By adopting their own versions of the new woman image, they identified feminist and socialist reform programs with modernity and progressive politics. The Swedish women's movement was unique among the European counties covered in this volume, in the skill with which it linked the cause of women's emancipation to developments in the arts and popular culture. An early example was the response to "social aesthetics," a new art/science that applied modern functional design and technology to such areas of everyday life as living and working spaces, health and recreation. The concept became so popular in Sweden that reformers of various kinds began to apply the tests of rationality and efficiency to social institutions. Organized women were among them, arguing the necessity of rationalizing a woman's environment in the home and the workplace, and, by extension, her relations with men and with her children. (Comment on this)
1:27 pm	Swedish Social Democrats Swedish Social Democrats, like their comrades in Norway, were able to introduce the welfare state in the mid-1930s because they applied Keynsian economics to the unemployment crisis of 1931. Ernst Wigforss, minister of finance, became a convert to the new economics under the influence of the Swedish economist, Gunnar Myrdal. Myrdal argued that instead of attempting to save money, the state ought to create new jobs, paid with cash wages, which would then increase consumption and revive industry. Under Wigforss's direction, the Social Democrats produced a program of modest state intervention that would supplement but not replace traditional mutual aid societies with state subsidies for the sick and the unemployed. A well-timed alliance with the Smallholder party enabled the Social Democrats to win support for their unemployment program in return for subsidies to the farmers. Overnight Online editing service by the best editors: online editing of high quality only! The electorate endorsed the program in the 1936 election, and the two parties formalized their cooperation in a coalition government led by Hansson. This was the government that gave Sweden an extensive welfare state, with pensions, social security, secondary education, subsidized housing, state loans for newly married couples to buy their first home, and expanded maternal and child welfare. Most historians have had nothing but praise for the Swedish welfare state, reflecting the overall enthusiasm with which people from all social classes and reform organizations received it at the time. Although the protection of labor was central to his idea of social justice, Hansson listened to different points of view and came up with a program that was to be universally applied. For example, by the end of the 1930s, 90 percent of all mothers took advantage of maternity insurance and assistance. They and not their husbands were the direct recipients of the cash benefits. Private philanthropic initiatives in child welfare and postpartum maternity care were drawn under the state umbrella. Historians argue that this early model of the welfare state created a popular perception of government as a bulwark of democracy and civil rights, not a "big brother" invading the private sphere. It gave the (male) working class a direct and participatory interest in government. But questions remain about the welfare state and women. How much did women's own efforts, as members of the party or as feminists, ensure that the welfare state met women's needs? What influence did changes in popular cultural images of women, labeled "the new woman," have on socialist policy makers? (Comment on this)
1:26 pm	The “People’s Home": Social Welfare Policies in the 1930s The 1928 general election was a wake-up call to Swedish Social Democrats who lost seats to both Conservatives and Communists. Party leader Per Albin Hansson heard the call, then step by step transformed the SAP from a Marxist Socialist party to a reforming "people's party." Social Democratic instability in the 1920s had had a lot to do with factionalism. The Trade Union Board under Communist influence, allied with Leftwing members in the party -- including the men who campaigned against married women's right to work -- to challenge executive committee decisions on a number of issues, including major strikes. After the 1928 election defeat, Per Albin Hanssen mobilized the party majority against the Left and ordered an end to factionalism. His personal strength and the electoral good sense of his reform initiatives convinced the Trade Union Board to accept his leadership and integrate the unions more closely with the party. In 1932, Hansson became Social Democratic prime-minister with a social reform program designed to meet the needs not just of the industrial working-class but of the mass of the people, including smallholders, the lower middle-class, and women. He called this program "The People's Home," and it became the model for the modern European welfare state. If you want Custom essay writing, request essay help at our site! We draft Custom essays at low price! He appealed to the party's women members to bring their special powers to the task of building a more just and well-organized society: "We have now gone so far as to furnish the great People's Home. Now it is a matter of creating comfort and well-being, making it bright and happy and free. Women will be ideal for this work, and need only bring their enthusiasm." He labeled party men who tried to limit women's participation in the project "non-democrats." However, Per Albin Hanssen emphasized that he was not a feminist. His views on the woman question appear to have been similar to those of Ellen Key, especially her idea of social motherhood. His call for women's help in "decorating" the People's Home was essentially a bid for their votes. (Comment on this)
1:25 pm	The Issue of Unmarried Mothers On the issue of unmarried mothers, Social Democratic women had contradictory opinions. While they fully supported maternity reform and rejected bourgeois morality, they had their own line of moral condemnation of their fallen sisters. Some writers in Morning-Breeze accused them of being irresponsible for getting pregnant in the first place, and considered them morally reprehensible for giving up their children. The best Custom Thesis and overnight services online. Buy thesis done by professional thesis writers! Others emphasized that fathers must be made to recognize and pay for their children and that illegitimate children should have the same right to inherit from their fathers as those who were born inside marriage. Many eulogized motherhood as the most important event in a woman's life, "the highest mission ... to bear the humanity of the future," and expressed anxiety that free abortion and the legalization of contraceptives would make women vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Others argued that birth control and abortion were the necessary price to pay for sexual emancipation and voluntary motherhood. Despite the range of these opinions, they shared a primary focus on the mother who was assumed to bear the greater part of responsibility for her child. Ellen Key was, without doubt, the source of inspiration for the idealization of motherhood that is so apparent in the 1920s contributions to Morning-Breeze. In 1925, the journal celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday with songs and articles. The clubs staged specially written plays to dramatize her ideas about women, home, and motherhood. She was variously referred to as, "the preacher of the deepest values of life" and "the great moral genius." Her face appeared frequently on the front page of Morning Breeze. When she died the following year, Hulda Flood represented the Social Democratic Women's Federation at her funeral. Key's idea of social motherhood -- that women should apply their special biological capacity for nurturing to the social problems of the modern world -- became a significant strand in Swedish social democracy. But it increased the division between the progressive leadership, often allied with liberal feminists, and local club women. The latter responded with pride and enthusiasm to Key's affirmation of their social value as actual or potential wives and mothers, while progressives argued that by equating women with their biological function of motherhood, Key was ensuring their dependence on men, and denying them an opportunity to develop other interests and skills. Reconciliation came in the 1930s, when their party gave a measure of support to both points of view. (Comment on this)