”I have to be away by ten past so I can get the bus to the party”, says Gudrun Schyman, the charismatic co-leader of Sweden’s Feminist Initiative party, as she glances at her tablet. In a small café down the street from the Swedish Parliament the veteran politician sits unassumingly in a corner, unrecognized by the tourists around her.
She is referring to a homeparty, a false Anglicism invented to describe the meetings of young activists across the country that have proven to be a pillar of a radical and increasingly successful feminist political movement with international ambitions. That night Schyman was booked to talk to a group of feminist supporters in Kungsholmen, an inner Stockholm suburb.
Founded in 2005, these gatherings of young activists and supporters have been the cornerstone of Feminist Initiative –or Fi – in their rise from interesting also-rans to a small but significant force on Sweden’s political scene.
”The concept came about by necessity”, says Schyman. “Around the summer of 2013 there was a growing interest in feminism and Feminist Initiative. We had no money or resources and could not hire venues and the like, so I said ’if you get 25 people at home I’ll come’. I’d tested it out in a European election previously with some success”
