ABSTRACT
The sameness/difference debate is applicable to more than the decade of the 1960s. It was as much part of the dialogue about women in the nineteenth century, as it is embraced in the contemporary gender debates of the 1990s. Mary Ruggie's work on post-war Sweden has identified how an 'equality policy' which looks to the general non-gender specific interests of the labour force has failed to improve the position of women workers in Sweden. Ruggie shows that when labour and its interests were viewed in universal terms women's specific concerns became sidelined in a workplace environment dominated by men. The notions of gender sameness and difference necessarily position women workers only as they stand in relation to men - as the female 'other' to the dominant male. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
