Jewish and Woman. Intersectional and historical perspectives on Jewish Women’s lives in Sweden during the twentieth and twenty-first century

Group of actors in the play
Anna Backlund

The overriding purpose of this project is to investigate the history of Swedish Jewish women and their experiences of antisemitism and sexism during the twentieth and twenty-first century.

Källmaterial till projektet Photo credit Malin Thor TurebyThe empirical aims of the project are to explore how Jewish women’s roles and positions have been told in the Jewish public sphere and to analyse how Jewish women themselves tell their life stories and eventual experiences of antisemitism and sexism. Further, a methodological aim of the project is to develop the intersectional research approach, by using a historical perspective and oral history. With an intersectional and historical perspective, the project will analyse social categories and discourses in relation to “Jewish women” in various forms of written and oral materials. But the analysis will also, with the help of oral history, investigate how normative social categories and positions are told and resisted by the subjects of the study, the Jewish women. The study will contribute with new knowledge and on how Jewish women has been positioned in the Swedish-Jewish public as well as important new knowledge about Swedish Jewish women’s experiences of antisemitism and sexism and what consequences these experiences has had for their lives and life choices. Further the study will contribute to the research field of intersectionality while developing a methodology, with the help of the historical perspective and oral history, to investigate how normative social categories and positions are told and resisted by individuals and groups who are positioned as marginalized in society.

The project is funded by the Swedish Research Council.