Introduction

In the mid-1970s a young member of the Swedish Parliament articulated the political aim of Swedish gender equality politics as ‘getting mom a job and making dad pregnant’ (Klinth, 2008, p 20). This statement should be read in the context of the notion of Swedish gender equality politics as ‘the double emancipation’, based on the idea that both men and women should cast off their old traditional ‘sex-roles’ (Palme, 1972; Klinth, 2002; Mellström, 2005). This chapter analyses images from brochures published and distributed by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency with the aim of informing parents and soon-to-be parents about their right to parental leave. The political aim of achieving gender equality through parental leave has been a recurring theme ever since the parental leave insurance was gender-neutralised in 1974. From being an insurance programme directed at mothers, it was renamed and directed at both the mothers and fathers of new-born infants (Klinth, 2002; Lind Palicki, 2010). The images used to promote parental leave are thus analysed as part of the gender equality politics that intended to ‘make dad pregnant’.

Sweden has the most generous state-funded parental leave insurance in the world. Insurance as a bureaucratic and political tool for governance has been extensively researched in Sweden (Widerberg, 1993; Klinth, 2002; Johansson and Klinth, 2010), as have the normative claims concerning who should use parental leave and under what circumstances (Lind Palicki, 2010). However, as a political tool for gender equality, if ‘gender equality’ is defined as more fathers using their parental leave, the insurance has not been particularly successful. Mothers still use approximately 80% of the insurance (Statistics Sweden, 2008; Johansson and Klinth, 2010). Since the 1970s the Swedish Social Insurance Agency has launched repeated campaigns and has continuously produced information brochures about parental leave insurance directed at fathers, as a part of its political assignment from various governments (Klinth, 2002). Although the campaigns have been directed at fathers, the information material such as brochures, posters and televised information films have been directed at all parents. However, it is clear from just a brief look at the material produced from 1974 and onwards that it addresses fatherhood.