Strengnäs newspaper is met with anger on social media.
That after a report about a housewife was published – on International Women’s Day.
– We thought that all voices must be heard, just because you are a woman you don’t have to think that what is in quotation marks is “right”, says Catarina Nitz, news director at the newspaper, who wrote the report.
“Embarrassing and backwards” and “Who gave Strängnäs newspaper a time machine so they could go back to 1940?”. So it sounds in the Facebook comments to the report that the newspaper published on Women’s Day, March 8, where they have met housewife Marina, who wants to inspire other women to be like her.
In the report, you get to follow Marina, who has a thousand followers on her Instagram account Hemmafruinspiration. She talks about her everyday life as a housewife and her view on gender roles.
– I usually say that you should curl your husband but not your children, Marina says, among other things, in the interview.
The newspaper’s news manager Catarina Nitz responded to the criticism in a column.
“Women in Sweden have the right to make their own life choices and freedom to express their opinions, even if we do not agree, or think they are making an unwise career choice,” she writes.
Therefore, the article published March 8
Now Catarina Nitz tells why the article was published on International Women’s Day, something that upset many.
– It was not an unconscious publication. The editor-in-chief and I discussed this before. We thought that all voices must be heard, just because you are a woman you don’t have to think what is, in quotation marks, “right.”
She highlights that more articles about women were published in Strengnäs newspaper on March 8. Among other things, an article about a young female columnist who gets a lot of hate and compares her to a male colleague – and a report about a beer tasting for girls.
– I think we highlighted several different aspects of being a woman this day.
Catarina Nitz says that there was even more planned, where illness put sticks in the wheels.
– The original plan was to do further reporting with a woman who started her own business, but she fell ill. It had been another publication that was more expected.
“Good that it created debate”
Catarina Nitz does not see the fact that there is a debate on social media as something negative.
– Women’s lives can look very different, if you are democratically minded you must also allow these opinions to exist, that is in the liberal basic idea.
Catarina Nitz does not believe that everyone who commented on social media actually read the article. She has not personally received any direct hatred in the form of e-mails and the like.
– The tone of the debate has been quite okay. I’ve seen worse threads with more sexist slurs. People disagree, they don’t have to.