Peter Söderström (Sweden)

About this Speaker

Peter Söderström's area of expertise is gender inequality, with a focus on men's sexualized violence against women and children. He is particularly concerned with gender transformative violence prevention and a critical masculinity perspective. Over the past three years, Peter has been employed at Talita, who for more than 20 years have supported survivors from trafficking, prostitution and pornography into a new life, and most recently launched a violence prevention initiative called Reality Check. The foundation for Reality Check has been a knowledge inventory of national as well as international research. The project has developed a toolbox of different resources aimed at educators working with children and youth, so that they can address the content and destructive consequences of pornography. An additional focus has been to work strategically to reach politicians and decision-makers together with partners to address, for example, the need for legislative changes, a governmental task force investigating the harms of pornography, and an updated sex education curriculum with an integrated critical perspective on pornography. A third pillar of our work has been to raise awareness and disseminate knowledge about the fact that pornography is NOT sex, but rather men’s sexualized exploitation of and sexualized violence against women, based on an understanding of the connection between gender, power and violence and therefore the biggest challenge of our time if we want to reach an gender equal society.