From jämställd + -het. SAOB (edited in 1934) lists the verb jämnställa, now spelled jämställa (“to equal, to compare”), but neither the adjective jämställd nor the noun jämställdhet. Discussions on gender equality in the 1960s used both jämlikhet and jämställdhet, but in the mid 1970s, jämställdhet began to dominate in this context, and this was manifest in November 1976, when the Swedish government appointed a committee, jämställdhetskommittén chaired by Karin Andersson, which later proposed Sweden's gender equality law, enacted in 1979, lagen (1979:1118) om jämställdhet mellan kvinnor och män i arbetslivet, or jämställdhetslagen for short. After this, the qualifier mellan man och kvinna ("between men and women") became implied in a default context. Jämlikhet still refers to any kind of equal opportunity (race, age, religion, ...) but jämställdhet and jämställd only refer to gender equality.
jämställdhet c
| Declension of jämställdhet | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uncountable | ||||
| Indefinite | Definite | |||
| Nominative | jämställdhet | jämställdheten | — | — |
| Genitive | jämställdhets | jämställdhetens | — | — |