Re-framing in Friction: On Trans-inclusive Enactment of Gender Equality Aims

Warm welcome to the Gender Studies Advanced seminar (Högre seminariet) where Dr Toby Odland, Linköping university, will present his doctoral dissertation "Re-framing in Friction: On Trans-inclusive Enactment of Gender Equality Aims (2025)

How and why do inequalities become reproduced in interventions that aim to combat them? In my doctoral thesis Re-framing in Friction: On Trans-inclusive Enactment of Gender Equality Aims (2025), I explore this question about recursive dynamics with a focus on the complexity of, and ambiguity in, practical labor that seeks to change how work for change is enacted. I consider how these dynamics manifest both in the organization of labor of addressing and intervening in gendersexed inequalities (könsbaserade ojämlikheter), and through various modes of framinggendersexed inequalities (what they are, what they do, and how they are most efficiently combated). In this study, I draw on accounts from gender equality practitioners (jämställdhetspraktiker) about their practical labor as they in different ways seek to make their own work and their organizations' efforts and ambitions for gender equality more inclusive of Trans people and our experiences. Through an interdisciplinary inquiry, I have studied both institutionalization of gender equality work and aims in public organizations in Sweden, and how some ideas of Trans-inclusive enactment become possible, desirable, and hopeful, while others become impossible, undesirable, and fearsome.
In this presentation, I will speak about how I developed and used a feminist approach for following the situated criticality of those who do within organizations what would otherwise not be done by them. I will also discuss some of my main conclusions concerning recursive entanglements in the constitution of i) legitimate and illegitimate subjects for efforts to combat inequalities, and ii) legitimate and illegitimate tools and strategies for carrying out such efforts.