“There is always something that one can do”

This chapter introduces the work and writings of 20th-century Swedish politician, diplomat and public intellectual Alva Myrdal. Myrdal’s social democrat family politics was based on a bizarre combination of feminist and eugenic social engineering, which shaped the organization of the Swedish welfare state and advanced women’s participation in the labour market. According to Myrdal, a person’s abilities were a question of nurture more than nature; rather than being given at birth, they were shaped and nurtured by social and economic conditions. Alva Myrdal may be seen as the key architect of a modern and egalitarian “gender system” that has increasingly, albeit imperfectly, shaped the lives and careers of Swedish women and men. Myrdal was a tempered radical who achieved radical change through mainstream institutions. She may have dressed and looked like a femocrat, but her unselfish devotion to social progress is in stark contrast to contemporary femocrats who seem to care about little but their own careers.