Work · Life & Existential Philosophy
Misused Womanpower
Lecture and essay arguing that the women’s movement should not measure women by men’s work: women’s strength lies in motherhood and care, which society should value – a position that set her against much of the equality feminism of her time.
Introduction
Key first presented “Missbrukad kvinnokraft” as a lecture and published it in 1896. She argued that the women’s movement erred when it measured women by their ability to do men’s work: women’s particular strengths lay in motherhood, care and the life of feeling, and society should value these rather than draw women into competition with men. The essay provoked a sharp debate in Sweden, where many feminists saw it as a betrayal of the struggle for equal rights. It marks the starting point of Key’s “motherhood feminism”, which she developed in later works and which influenced, among others, Hiratsuka Raichō in Japan.
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