"Concepts up for discussion: On the concept of genus in Swedish Gender Studies"

This article concerns a lively conceptual debatethat took place in Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift (Swedish Journal of Women's Studies) between 1980-1998. When Yvonne Hirdman, a Swedish historian, in 1988 introduced the concepts of gender and gender system in KVT (in Swedish: genus and genussystem), this sparked off intense discussions and caused theoretical divisions within Swedish feminism. Opinions were divided on the direction that one believed feminist theory should take. Should one strive for something like a new Grand Theory on women's subordination or should the aspirations be somewhat smaller?In this article the author illustrates the shifting emphases in the journal on such theoretical problems as essentialism versus social constructivism and agents of change versus stabile structures -perspectives. The article also takes into account the new challenges that different theories of a more or less postmodern nature put forward, for instance sexual difference theory. The ongoing feminist theoretical developmenthas included an expansion, both in terms of a broadening of the investigatory horizon and research delving deeper into various fields. Nowadays Women's Studies is part of the larger field of Gender Studies. Genus, today, signifies the growing amount of knowledge about sex and gender,femininity and masculinity, and is often conceptualized,not as a system, but as an ongoing identity forging process of historically changing ideas.