Can Fathers Speak? : Men’s Agency in Parenting and Rhetorical Processes of Change Toward Gender Equality

This thesis examines how fathers in Sweden experience and enact parenthood in relation to the political goal of gender equality. Drawing on ten semi-structured interviews with fathers of preschool-aged children, the study analyzes how fatherhood is shaped, constrained, and enabled within everyday contexts. The analysis combines theories of rhetorical ecologies, vernacular rhetoric, and rhetorical agency with gender-theoretical perspectives on fathering as a performative and relational practice. Through critical rhetorical analysis, the thesis highlights how discourses, institutional practices, and material conditions interact in the production of fatherhood ideals and fathers’ everyday agency. The findings reveal a persistent gap between gender equality ideals and lived parental practices, where fathers’ agency is both enabled and limited by norms of masculinity, caregiving, and responsibility. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of how gender equality as a political project is negotiated in everyday fatherhood and identifies rhetorical conditions that shape possibilities for social change.