No housewives in Sweden?

A Swedish feminist ("Linnbe") recently posted an appeal at the men's rights page at reddit. She wanted men to think of feminists as their allies rather than as the enemy. She began with this comment:

Most feminists I know look at feminism as an equalist movement. They think that the only way to get rid of injustices is to encourage men to be nurturing as much as encourage women to be self reliable. Fathers should get legal support for parental leave for their baby. Subsided daycare makes it possible for parents in low pay employment to work full time if they choose to ...

Most feminists are your friends.

This is the familiar Swedish mindset. There's an assumption that autonomy (being "self-reliable") is what matters; that you become autonomous through your career; and therefore women should be more career and less family oriented. This is helped along if men take on more of the child care.

This reduces men to the role of propping up female autonomy.

But it was Linnbe's next comment which I thought most striking:

Feminism is very strong here, several male party leaders have claimed to be feminists ... And with this feminist power that I would call quite a bit stronger then the American, I find the American society worse for men then the Swedish ...

Women [in Sweden] are expected to work and housewives are VERY rare. I don't know anyone that would call herself that, not even my grandparents and their friends.

So the great Swedish achievement is getting rid of housewives. Linnbe assumes that we will see this as a great mark of human progress. What I see instead is a revelation of what liberal modernity leads to. It doesn't lead to greater choice or diversity, as liberals like to claim it will do, but to one standard undifferentiated role for both men and women.

Is there really a "respect for difference" when it comes to sex roles in Sweden? Do Swedish women really have choice when it comes to their role in the family and society?

Making autonomy the organising principle of society is incoherent. If you set out to maximise autonomy you end up restricting it. If you say "the way for women to be more autonomous is to get them to do X" you then restrict women from doing Y and Z, which itself then infringes women's autonomy. And if you are committed to making autonomy equal (as the key good in life), you have to find a way to formally regulate its distribution, which then means restricting the scope of people's lives to those things that can be more readily socially regulated or administered.

The real level of autonomy falls the more it is made the organising principle of society.