SWEDEN'S QUEST FOR EQUALITY

...Better planning of land resources and measures against land speculation...

...Our next report," she told me, "will show that reforms have been carried out but that they are not yet sufficient...

...Other major reforms proposed in the report outline advances to be made in the labor market, and in equality between the sexes, in the administration of social welfare, and in laws surrounding family affairs...

...Explaining how the issue of equality had evolved, Alva Myrdal told me, "We had believed that with socialism, strong trade unions, and the Swedish cooperative movement, we were working towards a social order which would automatically give us greater equality...

...News...

...It is a difficult task which, among other things, means rethinking and reforming earlier innovations such as a national pension system, national health insurance, and educational opportunities...

...gradual replacement of the traditional grading system with individual reports...

...Traditional equal opportunity means that the strongest will always come out on top and get more...

...We are just now taking a close look at each regulation to see that it is equitable, especially between men and women...

...His articles have appeared in Esquire, The Washington Monthly, and Saturday Review...

...This made us begin to examine every aspect of Swedish life and to begin to discover the real inequality which our society still tolerated...

...In taking a concept that has been alive since the French Revolution and attempting to give it new vigor, the latest phase in Swedish experimentation will demand close attention in the years ahead as a source of new ideas for application elsewhere...

...Here in Sweden women have the right to six months' paid maternity leave...

...He ticked off twenty-four items, including: • Greater equality for women...

...We maintain that society's responsibility for creating equal opportunity applies throughout life, not just at the beginning...

...Reforms for the handicapped and other special groups...

...In short, Sweden is moving towards a greater equality in bits and pieces...

...In terms of relative gross national product, Sweden is now the second richest nation in the world with a standard of living to match...

...We asked ourselves, 'What about the father, shouldn't he share in this?' As a step towards equality we have given the husband the right to ten days of paid paternity leave...

...We are talking about a systematic rectification of social situations...

...Or, as Alva Myrdal puts it: "What all of this really means is that we are now working hard to take out of society those factors which always work against the little fellow...

...Prime Minister Palme has said: "Total equality is a Utopia...

...The results of this determination to find where inequality lurked resulted in the Myrdal report, a broad call for the overhauling of a society which is already one of the most progressive in the world...

...Perfect equality is an unreasonable goal, and its Swedish sponsors realize this...

...Another is social security...

...Its first report, "Towards Equality" (it is also called "The Alva Myrdal Report"), has become the widely and hotly discussed working plan for the next stage in Swedish social development...

...The latest and perhaps most exciting development in the course of the Swedish Social Democratic "experiment" is an attempt to enact a series of reforms which fall under the banner of greater equality...

...Extension of the concept of industrial democracy...

...Expansion of health services, particularly outpatient care...

...Aside from Prime Minister Palme himself, the person most closely associated with the issue of equality is Alva Myrdal, whose somewhat cumbersome official title is Minister Without Portfolio for Disarmament and Ecclesiastical Affairs...

...Reduction of income differences, primarily by helping low-income groups...

...But the equality debate is active and alive, and many of those who do not support the total program support elements of it—for instance, while the largest trade union has yet to throw support behind the full Myrdal report, it has adopted the goal of raising the pay of workers at the lowest end of the pay scale, thereby working towards greater pay equalization...

...The equality issue has brought with it more than a little anguish as the nation confronts the questions of the limits of equality and its costs...

...That the Sweden of the 1970s is not a Utopia has become news prompting a gaggle of articles such as "Troubles in Paradise" (Forbes), "Paradise Lost" (Newsweek), and "Model Welfare State Runs Into Trouble" (US...

...greater integration of the handicapped into the educational mainstream...

...Despite the debate, legislation ranging from that of placing public representatives on the boards of the largest banks to new benefits for the handicapped has been made law under the banner of greater equality...

...it is as if the premise behind just about everything is being questioned anew...

...She admits that the actual form of this industrial democracy is still being worked out in experiments and in debates about policy which still must be made—for example, the trade unions have not yet come out strongly behind the seating of workers on company boards...

...Other important educational reforms advanced include a total system of recurrent education in which the boundaries between study and work are relaxed...

...By attempting to relieve the inequality of areas as far apart as the boredom of assembly line work and the educational deficiences of older citizens, Sweden may not only solve some of her own problems but once again show the way to other nations...

...Abolition of differences in social treatment of white and blue collar employes...

...Having achieved so much without relying on any single doctrinaire "ism," the modern Swedish state finds itself cast in a singular national role—a role that is hard to live up to...

...There continues to be intense debate over every aspect, ranging from the effect on individual incentives to the ultimate cost, which is far from cheap...

...It is a rejection of the traditional liberal idea of equality of opportunity, which is based on the assumption that we are all equal at the outset...

...Others have called it a model for so long that its problems tend to be magnified by outsiders...

...Equality in housing also demands a policy of encouraging socially diverse, non-segregated housing...

...By all accounts, equality has become and will continue to be the most fundamental issue for Sweden in the 1970s...

...We only know that today the inequalities are too great, and if we don't do anything about it they will be greater still...

...At the time of our conversation, Alva Myrdal was in the midst of working with her panel on a second report...

...Pre-schooling for all...

...Arms Control and Disarmament Agency told me, quite unofficially, that he looked on Alva Myrdal as the "relentless, sometimes abrasive, conscience of Geneva...

...He is the author of "Think Tanks" and, in a lighter vein, "The Great American Ice Cream Book," just published by Atheneum...

...Under its new equality program Sweden is priming a similar explosion in adult education...

...I met with Alva Myrdal in her office in the ornate Old Parliament Building in Stockholm to hear how the search for greater equality is progressing...

...However, as a nation it has come to grips with the fundamental problems of hunger, unemployment, and poverty and offers its citizens a high level of security, amenities, and opportunities through a series of social systems ranging from day care for infants to a national pension program...

...The texture and breadth of what is envisioned were brought home last year when the Swedish magazine Sweden Now asked Prime Minister Olaf Palme to list the top priority measures needed to realize his party's call for greater equality...

...She was quick to point out that there has been some confusion as to what is meant by equality in the modern Swedish context...

...What is important is that an ambitious goal has been targeted by the party in power, and it is now on the table for debate and action...

...Recently an official of the U.S...

...Earlier this year the Saab and Volvo announcements of experiments with work teams and other alternatives to the dehumanizing rigors of the continuous automotive assembly line were widely reported and discussed in the United States...

...Men will never be equal . . . But we don't have to speculate about where it will end...

...It calls for the privileged to relinquish or share their privileges...

...Some of the most important items advocated in the first report are still in the planning stages...

...To more than a few Swedes it is a Robin Hood scheme that will overburden the nation and the individual...

...To illustrate: Sweden's detonation of an education explosion over the last two decades has advanced the opportunities and skills of the young but left those of the older generations lagging...

...The decision by the ruling party to move towards fuller equality has not been met with the solidarity that Alva Myrdal and its other sponsors would like...

...It advocates a two-fold Swedish foreign policy in which the objectives are the development of the poorer nations (to bring a gradual equalization among nations) and cooperation in efforts within other nations so that racial, sexual, and class discrimination is gradually eliminated...

...Of all the realms studied in the original report, Alva Myrdal feels that highest priority must be assigned to equality in work, which means restructuring the workplace with new and creative approaches, ranging from placing workers on top level planning groups (up to and including boards of directors) to self-directing work groups where the workers themselves have the right to plan their day-to-day activities...

...Domestically, she has long acted as a leading theoretician of the Social Democratic Party and currently is the chairwoman of the Party's Working Group on Equality —the group appointed to search for the means to greater equality in Swedish life...

...The important news from Sweden is not that it is an imperfect, prospering Western society but that it is attempting new solutions to those problems which still Paul Dickson is a free lance writer who recently returned from a trip to Sweden...

...Still another housing reform is the call for greater citizen participation in residential planning...

...In attempting to create a new popular movement based on the goal of equality in a nation where class differences have been blurred (but by no means eradicated) and where social progress has been the order of the day for more than four decades, Palme's government has chosen an important and difficult course...

...We knew that we had a kind of a floor of social security and other institutions which would not let people fall through, but then in the late 1960s we began to realize that our institutions were not promoting equality per se...

...These accounts announced that a complex society is grappling with problems of inflation, high and rising taxes, an unemployment rate of about three per cent (which is totally unacceptable to the Swedish government), and worker dissatisfaction evidenced in a series of recent wildcat strikes which broke the country's long and internationally envied period of labor peace...

...While it is impractical to list all of the remedial proposals in the report, it is worthwhile to summarize the direction it advocates for certain aspects of Swedish life...

...For example, it was then that we began to see the great educational injustice which existed between generations and that the only way to change it was to offer vast new opportunities in adult education...

...For example, it strongly advocates acceptance of the premise that children born out of wedlock, adopted children, unmarried couples living together, and single people should be on a totally equal footing with others...

...In housing, the proposed reforms concentrate on the equal right to good housing with compensatory attention paid to those most in need of it, such as the person just out of prison...

...Thus far equality has become a popular subject for debate, but there is a long way to go before it can be said that there is a popular movement for equality...

...Why should an industrial worker, she asks, "be content to be a part of a hierarchy which is military in nature...

...exist—in short, that this experimental society is continuing to experiment...

...But the search for new worker-to-industry relationships has begun...

...Long called an "experimental" society because of its proclivity for trial and error ventures, more than forty years of Social Democratic leadership has produced a highly sophisticated state which has mixed socialism and capitalism to a prosperous balance...

...Under education, for example, top priority is assigned to breaking the cycle whereby the most advantaged get the most advanced education and, instead, placing greater emphasis on pre-school and adult education...

...The Saab/Volvo experiments are a joint industry, union, and government effort to see if workers can be liberated from monotonous work, and in Sweden they are looked upon as part of the overall drive to equality...

...Taken as a whole, the Myrdal report is a new model for the equal society which even includes the application of the principle outside of domestic affairs...

...and a broadening of the student sphere of influence, even at the primary school level...

...Our concept goes further because we say that there are certain people who must be compensated for in a systematic manner, such as a person with a physical handicap...

...Proposals under the heading of equality before the law include greater attention to white collar crime, more consumer protection, and new safeguards for insuring the rights of immigrants...

...Like her noted economist husband, Gunnar Myrdal, she is playing an important role in shaping the Swedish state...

...Some of the new Swedish experiments, particularly their pioneering attempts to humanize and democratize work, are already attracting attention...

...Currently she is in the vanguard of delegates pumping hard for a comprehensive nuclear test ban and a ban on chemical warfare...

...Today Sweden is grappling to find the proper mix of programs, reforms, laws, ideas, and attitudes to bring a new concept of equality to functioning reality...

...Others in Europe have made fun of this reform, but we don't think that letting the father off for a few days when the family is going through the crisis of childbirth is a joke...

...Equality reform means more taxes in a nation where taxes are already the highest in the world...

...The report opens by pointing to a long list of prior advances but moves quickly to the "great inequalities" which still exist between citizens of low and high income, the unemployed and the employed, the young and the old, the healthy and the ill or handicapped, men and women, the family and the single person, and the urban and rural dweller...

...Expansion of consumer protection...

...Real equality before the law is one area which is requiring careful and deliberate work...

...The search for a solution touches upon virtually every aspect of Swedish life...

...The young Swedish worker feels this and is now growing impatient with the factory and workplace—after all, these are the people who have gone through schools where they have been treated as equals, and they are then sent out to a factory where they are ordered about like slaves...

...It is immediately apparent that many of the "great inequalities" are realms which most Western nations find quite tolerable...

...Among the several important roles she plays under this title is one as head of the Swedish delegation to the Geneva Conference on Disarmament, where she has acted as a persistent prodder and outspoken critic in that go-slow world...