ABSTRACT
With its nine million people, Sweden is generally regarded as a relatively wealthy nation with high housing quality and gender equality, compared to most other countries in the world. However, this country has not always had such a position, and it is also an assumption that is increasingly being questioned. From the late nineteenth century up to the present time, national and local housing policies have emerged, flourished and faded away, somewhat parallel to the development of public housing. Charities and poor laws have been supplemented or replaced by social services and social securities, which have grown in scope and strength, stabilised, matured but then somewhat declined. The establishment of a comprehensive welfare state from the mid-nineteenth century on encouraged and enabled gender equality and the public sector constitutes an important labour market for women. Some basic elements in family policy were formed in the 1970s and still work to support for families with small children. Along with the historical development of society, women’s position in the family and in the home, as well as on the markets for labour and housing, has changed dramatically – although in different ways, depending on class, generation, national origin, family situation and urbanisation.
