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"Being a girl has become a public health problem!": Feminist organizations both resisting and reproducing postfeminist mental health discourses
Umeå University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Epidemiology and Global Health.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2098-871X
2025 (English)In: NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, ISSN 0803-8740, E-ISSN 1502-394X, Vol. 33, no 1, p. 31-44Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

An apparent decline in youth mental health in the Nordic countries has received a lot of attention over the last decade, and young women have been described as a particularly vulnerable group. To combat the problem, political debate has centred on solutions at the individual level, despite significant evidence of the associations between structural factors and adverse mental health. In this article, I explore how two feminist support organizations working for young women in Sweden (tjejjourer) frame and address girls' mental health as a problem of feminist concern. Interviews with staff, organizational documents, websites, social media, and other communications were analysed following Snow and Benford's theory on collective action frames, to identify the organizations' problem diagnoses, solutions, and motivational frames for action. The results show that the organizations both reiterate and resist a postfeminist discourse on mental health. There is notable friction between structural problem diagnoses, based on intersectional analyses of power, and political demands and support oriented towards the individual. In conclusion, I argue that this friction may be a result of the organizations' adoption of discourses on risk, vulnerability, and mental health itself, but also that the complex relationship between structural critique and individual care is indispensable for feminist organizing.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
London: Routledge, 2025. Vol. 33, no 1, p. 31-44
Keywords [en]
youth mental health, postfeminism, feminist organizations, young women, social movements
Keywords [sv]
psykisk hälsa, postfeminism, tjejjourer, sociala rörelser, feministiska organisationer
National Category
Gender Studies Public Health, Global Health and Social Medicine
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-224604DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2024.2354770ISI: 001225270700001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105001969311OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-224604DiVA, id: diva2:1859167
Available from: 2024-05-21 Created: 2024-05-21 Last updated: 2025-05-06Bibliographically approved

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Bäckström Olofsson, Hanna

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Citation style
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