We have been reconstructing Swedish Feminist Initiative, F!, herstory. Asking everybody about it, we learnt that in F! there is nobody making any money out of it. But then the question that came up is: who are all these people who made the decision to jump into this project, with no connection to their professional lives and, sometimes, putting them at stake?
We have met a number of newcomers, women with no political experience. Like Eva Maria, a 50-year-old midwife, professor at Gothenburg University--very experienced in breast-feeding and natural birth methods--, who tells us about the first time she learnt about F! and, how, with a lot of excitement, she contacted them. She has been married to a man who died four years ago, after twelve years sick, and has raised four kids. She is aware of her limited political experience and how much she has to learn. That is why she did not enter the parliamentary list this time. But she is a convinced and convicing militant on feminist issues and feels happy with her new commitment. She is working in a worthwhile project!
Sara, Kristin and Anna are three fresh young students in the University of Gothenburg. I have shared Sara's flat for a night. When I have arrived there, I have found it as untidy as my own place when I was her age. She tidies it up in a minute (wondering perhaps how this lady might feel about it). Afterwards, she relaxes and looks cool again. Sara contacted F! from the very beginning and took there all her friends, even her younger brother! Her parents are shepherds at a Swedish church, very special ones, as she tells. When she was born, her father decided to share the parental leave with her mother at 50%, and, because of that, he was punished by the church. She is now 20 years old and has already been in both religious and anarchist associations with some organizational problems between these two drives. Now she is number 7 candidate in the F! Gothemburg local list.
Another chapter is formed by the old feminist women, without which F! would not have existed. They have brought about the necessary reflection and experience. They have also contributed to the initial exploding mixture of personalities and visions that found it difficult to come along together in a political program. Some of these women left the project in a very unfortunate way, openly airing their differences in front of the media, who manipulated it to the max helping create the impression that “these old and ugly feminists will never reach anywhere with all these arguments.” 
Stina Sundberg is one of this old feminist that remains in F! ranks. She is number 5 in the parliament list. She explains how they tried years ago to organize a feminist political movement, threatening the existing parties if they did not promote women in the political lists. And it worked making it happen in a way that all parties now mix women and men in their candidate lists with no need of a legal regulation forcing them to do so. Stina can also remember how they approached Gudrun Schyman when she started to turn into feminism, and how they all understood that a new platform was needed, a new gathering of people working together in a very comprehensive way, leaving old fundamentalisms behind.
Kristina Hultman is another long term feminist, who goes as number 8 in the F! parliament list. She was talking extensively to us and she has become a friend. Kristina is currently working as a free-lance journalist and she explains how difficult and stigmatizing it is to publicly position yourself as a feminist, and the high price you have to pay in professional terms. This is also a factor that prevents many women to take a step forward to pronounce actively their political sympathy to feminism, joining a party like F!.
There are also women who come from other parties and a different political background. They are social movement activists with lots of experience in real life issues. A key person here is Milka Saxlund, coming from Uruguay and who was granted political assylum in Sweden thirty years ago. Milka is the head of the F! list for the Gothemburg municipality. She very well knows the city politics and the immigration experience in a racist and discriminatory environment, in a Sweden that tries to fight hard against it. She is the single mother of six--yes, six--, kids. Milka lives with an inexhaustible fire in her welcoming heart. We could write lots of posts about her life experience.
And there are also men in F!, it is a real discovery.
They are truly feminist. I will have to write more to let you know why it is that I say this. They have undertaken the initiative of keeping themselves in a second row, leaving the close up to women, realizing that men usually take all the credit, attention and space, and abdicating of that patriarchal scheme.
Many people all over the world have their eyes on F!. Many feminist here have their hearts and hopes at stake. Thinking of them all, I wish, more than ever before, they could make that 4% they need to enter parliament.
After today a new stage will begin, as interesting and special as this one. But now we are all focused on election day, and results, and we get the champagne ready, just in case!
María
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