Swedish Women’s Lobby

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The Swedish Women's Lobby (or Sveriges Kvinnoorganisationer; SWL) is a Swedish gender-critical organization. Once an umbrella organization representing mainstream feminist politics and trans-inclusive positions, it has, since the late 2010s, become increasingly defined by its alignment with anti-transgender activism and gender-critical views.^[1][2][3] While it continues to brand itself as feminist, it has drawn widespread criticism for advancing trans-exclusionary views and promoting anti-gender ideology in Sweden and beyond. Its evolution into a key promoter of anti-trans politics and far-right alliances has become a cautionary tale of radicalization.

In 2025, SWL joined forces with SPLC-designated hate group Women's Declaration International and other far-right and anti-trans groups to launch Women's Platform for Action International (WoPAI), a self-described global network for “sex-based rights” that serves as an international umbrella group for the organized anti-trans movement. The group shares its secretariat and address with SWL, highlighting SWL's role in exporting anti-trans ideology internationally. In its founding statements, WoPAI denounces what it calls the "queer agenda", a "pro-gender movement" in academia and NGOs, and "non-legal and not agreed upon by the international community concepts of ‘gender identity’".^[4] This language draws on conspiracy tropes, including portrayals of shadowy elites as orchestrating societal change and claims of institutional capture. It reflects a broader populist and anti-intellectual framing common in anti-gender movements, which position themselves in opposition to expert knowledge, academic institutions, and progressive NGOs.

Embracing anti-trans politics

The Swedish Women’s Lobby was founded in 1997 as an umbrella group for the Swedish women’s movement. It brought together dozens of member organizations to promote gender equality. In its early years, it represented normal feminist positions. A 2015 report on their website, offering guidance for feminist organizing, emphasized the importance of actively working against cissexism and ensuring inclusion of trans and queer people. It noted that individuals who do not conform to the binary gender norm have long struggled to find space within the feminist movement, and that it is essential to combat both the discrimination they face and the ignorance that often underlies it. The report defined "not recognizing other gender identities or gender expressions than man and woman, or not taking transgender people's gender identity or gender expression seriously" as a form of transphobia.^[5]

However, by the late 2010s, the organization’s rhetoric began shifting toward gender-critical (TERF) ideology,^[1] which opposes recognition of transgender identities and frames trans rights as a threat to women. This shift culminated in 2019, when the SWL denied board candidacy to Signe Krantz, a 20-year-old transgender woman representing the member organization Maktsalongen. The SWL conducted an unauthorized, invasive and demeaning inquiry into her legal gender, prompting outrage from civil society and the National Council of Swedish Children and Youth Organisations, which accused SWL of blatant transphobia. Maktsalongen left the organization in protest. In an open letter to SWL the National Council of Swedish Children and Youth Organisations called SWL's actions "offensive" and "directly transphobic," noting that "a person's legal gender says nothing about their identity. The legal gender is determined by the National Board of Health and Welfare's Legal Council after a prolonged process, which is a remnant of the forced sterilizations that ended in 2013."^[6][7][8][9]

By 2020, Nordic gender studies scholars such as Alm and Engebretsen were drawing attention to SWL's promotion of gender-critical ideas,^[1] making SWL one of the first gender-critical organizations in the Nordic region and arguably its most influential anti-gender and anti-transgender lobby group. Alm and Engebretsen situate SWL’s alignment with gender-critical positions within a broader trend, highlighting the early signs of a growing convergence between "gender-critical" activists and far-right actors, a pattern that would later materialize in SWL’s own alliances. They note that "a key issue in the current political and scholarly landscape is the growing convergence, and sometimes conscious alliances, between 'gender-critical' feminists (sometimes known as TERFs – Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists), religious and social conservatives, as well as right-wing politics and even neo-Nazi and fascist movements."^[1] This shift aligns with what Claire C. A. House has identified as a broader international trend beginning in the mid-2010s, where women’s and (radical) feminist actors increasingly participate in anti-gender and regressive politics, often with particularly harmful consequences for trans rights, including in Sweden.^[10]

Since then, SWL has emerged as a prominent actor within the European anti-gender movement and an active promoter of anti-transgender ideology on the international stage. During the COVID-19 pandemic—a period marked by intensified circulation of anti-trans conspiracy theories and broader radicalization around gender issues—SWL further entrenched its alignment with gender-critical discourse. It adopted rhetoric commonly associated with far-right actors, reframing opposition to trans rights in the language of “sex-based rights” and mobilizing narratives around “gender ideology” that resonate with populist and reactionary agendas. By 2023 SPLC-designated hate group Women's Declaration International had become a member of SWL. SWL has also hosted and promoted Kajsa Ekis Ekman, a leading figure in the Swedish transphobic movement also known for her pro-Kremlin views. In 2023, SWL and the anti-trans group “Women's Rights Watch” co-organized a seminar critical of gender self-identification, which promoted anti-trans rhetoric and opposed trans rights. The event featured prominent figures in the international anti-transgender movement, including Reem Alsalem.^[11] In 2024, SWL aligned with the Sweden Democrats, a far-right party, to oppose the Gender Recognition Act supported by nearly all other parties, including the entire political left.^[2] Gender studies scholars Michal Grahn and Malin Holm observed that SWL’s claims—that the Gender Recognition Act would endanger “women’s rights” and allow “men” to access “women-only spaces”—closely mirror the “threat to women” narratives commonly employed in anti-trans rhetoric across other national contexts.^[3] In 2024, SWL accused "progressive parties and movements" of working against women.^[12]

Gender studies scholars Karlberg, Korolczuk and Sältenberg have argued that the rise of gender-critical and anti-trans rhetoric in Sweden, including that promoted by actors like the Swedish Women’s Lobby, is part of a broader process of "insidious de-democratization," a set of discourses and practices that erode liberal democracy by marginalizing already vulnerable groups.^[2]

An international TERF hub: WoPAI

In 2025, the Swedish Women’s Lobby launched Women's Platform for Action International (WoPAI), a self-declared global network of organizations defending so-called "sex-based rights", a term widely recognized as a TERF dogwhistle for opposing transgender inclusion. Conceived as an international vehicle for the TERF movement, WoPAI positions itself against what it calls the "pro-gender movement" in academia and NGOs, as well as "queer, postmodern, or neoliberal agendas of liberal and leftist origin." It also says it opposes "large civil society organizations that claim to be feminist".^[4] Despite claiming to be politically neutral, WoPAI’s rhetoric obsessively targets the left: feminist NGOs, academic institutions, and international human rights groups that support trans people. Its founding statement accuses progressives of redefining womanhood into a “matter of opinion” and claims that gender identity is a "non-legal" concept invented by elites to subjugate women.^[4] Like many anti-trans groups, WoPAI borrows language from conspiracy theories.

WoPAI’s actual agenda mirrors that of the far-right: dismantling legal protections for trans people, erasing gender identity from law and policy, and pushing a biologically essentialist definition of womanhood. Its public support for a 2024 UK court ruling, which defined women strictly as “biological females”, was celebrated with the slogan: “The UK Supreme Court knows what a woman is.”^[13]

The organization is effectively a rebranding and international extension of SWL itself. SWL secretary-general Susannah Sjöberg serves in the same role at WoPAI, and both groups share the same address and infrastructure. WoPAI’s core membership includes a familiar cast of trans-exclusionary organizations, such as Women's Declaration International (WDI),^[14] an SPLC-designated hate group closely aligned with alt-right and authoritarian movements, that claims to have inspired Donald Trump's assault on trans people. WDI’s Swedish branch, XXantippas Vrede, is also a member of SWL,^[15] highlighting the tight integration between national and international arms of the TERF movement. Given the deep ties and overt admiration many of its international affiliates, especially WDI, have for the Trump administration, it is no surprise that SWL’s latest anti-trans initiative echoes the rhetoric of the MAGA movement, prominently adopting slogans like "we put women and girls first."^[16]

Though WoPAI claims to represent women globally, it operates as a platform for reactionary anti-trans politics framed in the language of feminism. Its launch marks a clear effort to scale national trans-exclusionary activism into an international campaign, using rights-based rhetoric to legitimize exclusionary aims. The invocation of "women’s rights" in this context is not a genuine defense of feminist principles, but a strategic repurposing of feminist language to advance a regressive, anti-gender agenda.

Ideology and analysis

The Swedish Women’s Lobby presents itself as a defender of "women’s rights," but its agenda increasingly centers on opposing the rights of transgender people. It states that it promotes “sex-based rights”, a term rooted in biological essentialism that functions as a TERF dogwhistle and an anti-trans pseudolegal concept. What it advances is not feminist liberation, but a rigid, exclusionary view of gender that marginalizes trans and queer people.

Through campaigns, publications, and alliances, SWL has worked to mainstream anti-trans ideas by appropriating feminist language, reframing reactionary positions as concern for “women’s safety”. This is not grounded in the goals of feminist justice, but in a politics of fear and restriction.

Its discourse draws heavily on pseudoscientific claims and legal distortions, recycling discredited ideas into arguments against legal recognition for trans people. These claims are repackaged with activist branding and presented as neutral or commonsense positions, despite mirroring narratives promoted by religious fundamentalists and far-right movements.

While SWL describes itself as politically independent, its messaging and strategic alliances place it firmly within the broader international anti-gender movement. This movement is united not by a commitment to women’s rights, but by opposition to trans rights, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and the legal and social recognition of gender-diverse people. SWL’s rhetoric frequently echoes authoritarian and nationalist talking points, attacking “gender ideology,” demonizing NGOs, and painting progressives as enemies of women.

SWL’s alignment with gender-critical ideology and reactionary politics places it at odds with mainstream feminist activism and scholarship, which overwhelmingly supports trans-inclusive feminism, and even with the trans-inclusive feminist views once promoted by SWL itself. The version of feminism that SWL promotes today is a hollow one: stripped of solidarity, hostile to queer and trans people, and increasingly aligned with forces that seek to roll back rights for many. It uses the language of liberation to advance a politics of exclusion. Its transformation is a case study in how feminist organizations can be radicalized or captured by anti-trans politics.

External links

• The Swedish Women’s Lobby — English language
• Sveriges Kvinnoorganisationer — Swedish language

See also

• Women's Platform for Action International
• "Queer agenda"
• "Gender ideology"

References