Sweden has a longstanding reputation as an egalitarian country with a narrow gender gap.But a national debate about gender equality has revealed substantial dissatisfaction,with some Swedes feeling it has gone too far.Rousing controversy now is the issue of gender pedagogy,a concept that emerged in the early 2000s and typically involves challenging gender stereotypes in learning material and in avoiding treating male and female pupils in a stereotypical manner.But what has sharpened the debate in Sweden has been the argument that schools should also be gender neutral,giving children the opportunity to define themselves as neither male nor female if they wish.
Kristina Henkel,a gender expeIrt specializing in equality in schools,disputes the argument that gender pedagogy and neutrality are being foisted on Swedes.“Sweden has a long tradition of working with equality and this has had strong support among politicians,”
she says,and adds that“the question of gender neutrality,or of everyone having equal rights despite their gender,has also been driven by activists at the grassroots level.”
But Elise Claeson,a columnist and a former equality expert at the Swedish
Confederation of Professions,disagrees.“I have long participated in debates with gender pedagogues and they act like an elite,”she says.“They tend to be well.educated.live in big cities,and have contacts in the media,and they clearly despise traditional people.”
Ms.Claeson has been a vocal critic of the word“hen,”a new,gender.neutral pronoun that was recently included in the online version of the National Encyclopedia.Around the same time,Sweden’s first gender—neutral children’s book was published.The author,Jesper Lundqvist,uses hen throughout his book,completely avoiding han and hon,the Swedish words for him and her.
Claeson believes that the word hen can be harmful to young children because,she says,it can be confusing for them to receive contradicting messages about their genders in school,at home,and in society at large.“It is important to have your gender confirmed to you as a child.This does not limit children:it makes them confident about their identity...Children ought to be allowed to mature slowly and naturally.As adults we can choose to expand and change our gender identities.”
Last fall,nearly 200 teachers gathered in Stockholm to discuss how to avoid“traditional gender patterns”in schools.The conference was part of a research project run by the National Agency for Education and supported by the Delegation for Equality in Schools.“I work with these issues in Finland and Norway and it is clear to me that they have been inspired by the Swedish preschool—and school curricula,”says Ms.Henkel,the gender expert.But Henkel also insists that gender equality is a rights issue that cannot simply be left to the state to handle.Instead,she says,it requires the active involvement of citizens.
“Rights are not something we receive and then don’t have to fight for.This is about a redistribution of power,and for that,initiative and action are needed,not just fancy legislation.”
The problem that bothers Swedes most nowadays is________.
A.the controversy about gender pedagogy in school
B.the attempt to experiment gender neutrality in school
C.the slow progress of gender equality in school
D.the stubbornly serious gender stereotype in school
A.But there is a category of crimes that are forbidden regardless of the actor’s state of mind:so.called strict—liability offenses.One example is the sale of tainted drugs. Another is drunken driving.
B.The Dadss program,despite its effectiveness in preventing drunk driving,is criticized as a violation of human rights because it monitors drivers’behavior. and controls individual’s free will.
C.And the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of l998 has already criminalized the development of technologies that can be used to avoid copyright restrictions,making it effectively impossible for most people to illegally share certain copyrighted ma
D.If the actor doesn’t have the guilty state of mind,and he commits crime involuntarily,in this case,the actor will be convicted as innocent.
E.Perfect prevention of a crime like murder would require the ability to know what a person was thinking in order to determine whether he possessed the relevant culpable mental state.
F.The program,the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety(Dadss),is developing in vehicle technology that automatically checks a driver’s blood—alcohol level and,if that level is above the legal limit,prevents the car from starting.
G.But what if the government were to add a drug to the water supply that suppressed antisocial urges and thereby reduced the murder rate? This would seem like an obvious violation of our freedom.We need a clear method of distinguishing