As Denmark falls in gender rankings, a new feminist party wants power

In Denmark, immigration dominates the political agenda. This year, it has already been announced that migrant families will face tougher reunification rules, that the Prime Minister wants to make it easier to expel foreign criminals, and the government has proposed a ban on Islamic face coverings.

But a new political party, launched in June 2017, wants to shift the whole debate in a radical – and inclusive – direction. Feministisk Initiativ (F!) is Denmark's first feminist political party, hoping for a parliamentary mandate in the national elections next year. Its slogan: “Out with the racists, in with the feminists!”

"The one thing you can’t do is call people racist"

“In Denmark, we’re proud of saying that we’re very direct and that we can say anything. But, the one thing you can’t do is call people racist or say they have racist motives,” said Muneeza Rosendahl, an F! spokesperson and candidate in Copenhagen’s recent municipal elections.

A sister party in Sweden with the same branding and slogan has already seen some success. It won 20,000 votes in the last general election, and has gained seats in the municipal councils and European Parliament.

While Denmark is often seen as a paragon of equality, it has, in recent years, been slipping down the World Economic Forum’s annual international gender equality rankings. Denmark was in the world's top five back in 2014, and while other Nordic countries have remained there, it fell to 19th in 2016 and 14th in 2017.

“Unfortunately, we told ourselves that we’d cracked the gender equality problem, and we stopped working,” said Rosendahl. “Now, Denmark is sliding down the equality ranks, while our Nordic neighbours are still at the top. We still don’t have equal pay, for example, but we just don’t think about it anymore.”

Another pressing concern is political representation. “In politics, we’re still only at about 30% women, and it actually hasn’t really changed in the last 30 years,” she added.

"Denmark is sliding down the equality ranks, while our Nordic neighbours are still at the top"

F!'s proposed policies include a 50:50 split in parental leave between mothers and fathers, and efforts to equalise pay across different sectors. “In general, a lot of traditionally female-oriented places of work are very low paid and don’t have a high status in society - we want to change that,” said Rosendahl.

The party is also calling for a new gender-neutral pronoun, like the one Sweden introduced back in 2015. The Danish language today has the words “han” for he and “hun” for she - F! wants to introduce the neutral “hen”.

The agenda is “intersectional” in its feminism, a term that refers to how different forms of oppression - such as gender, class, race, and homophobia – interact to create different levels of discrimination. The party is developing its policies together with these different groups, holding workshops to discover their specific issues and needs. “We have the strategy that we want to develop our policies not for people but with the people," Rosendahl said.

"We want to develop our policies not for people but with the people"

Denmark is not the only country in which a feminist political party is trying to enter the mainstream. F! is an offshoot of a party that was first formed in Sweden in 2005, and that now has imitators in Norway and Finland. The UK also has the Women’s Equality Party, which was launched in 2015.

The real test for F! will come when the voters hit the ballot box in 2019 for the parliamentary elections. When it was only two months old, the party entered five candidates in the municipal elections, winning 2,060 votes in the Copenhagen city elections and 3,528 votes in the regional elections in late 2017.

The challenge now is securing the 20,109 voter declarations required for all new political parties to run for parliament. “If we get the declarations then yes, I do believe that we could get at least one seat in parliament,” said Rosendahl. Denmark’s proportional system has multiple political parties and coalitions, rather than single-party rule, are the norm.

“Obviously we want to change Danish society with a parliamentary mandate,” said Rosendahl. “But our second ambition is for other political parties to also undertake feminist initiatives - we want to affect the political agenda and push the feminist ideology. And with the whole #metoo movement, the focus is back on gender equality, so we’re happy about that.”

(Picture credit: Feministisk Initiativ Danmark)