Five years ago, on October 5, 2017, the New York Times published an investigation that became world news.
Film producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexually assaulting women for 30 years.
A few days later, actor Alyssa Milano took to Twitter to encourage women who have been sexually harassed or exploited to respond to the post with the phrase "me too."
It was the start of what has later been called a revolution.
No legal changes
The post spread in record time and had a big impact in Sweden as well, where it was followed by a long series of appeals from women in various professions.
But metoo has not had any consequences for Swedish legislation, according to Mårten Schultz, professor of civil law at Stockholm University.
- As a rule, no changes have taken place, he says.
Mårten Schultz believes that the metoo calls should rather be seen as an expression of shortcomings and weaknesses in our culture and how we deal with them, than because there is something wrong with the regulations.
- The type of sexual abuse that was widely discussed has long been criminal.
However, he emphasizes that defamation lawsuits have increased in number since then, which has led to criticism of current defamation legislation:
- There are several who want it to be reformed so that it should always be legal to tell the truth, so that if you have been the victim of abuse, you should always be able to tell about it without risk of legal liability.
That is not the case today.
The extent of sexual harassment has been made visible
Hillevi Ganetz, professor specializing in gender and popular culture at Stockholm University, has been researching the metoo movement in recent years.
She says the main change followed by metoo is that the conversation about sexual harassment has changed.
- It is possible to talk about it in a completely different way than before.
The blame has been shifted to the perpetrator.
Those we have spoken to often say that there used to be a culture of silence, that has changed.
It has also become easier to work with these issues, according to Hillevi Ganetz.
- Because people know what sexual harassment is these days.
That change is very important, that they have made visible what it is and how widespread it is.
metoo has really succeeded in that.
Javascript is disabled
Javascript must be enabled to play video
Read more about browser support
List: Irena Požar on Metoo's successes and setbacks.
Photo: TT