The Gender Photographer is now on YouTube! Here’s my first video, exploring what eight photos of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump can teach us about gender, power, and ideas of what a leader should look like.

Oops! I thought we would have outgrown this gender cliché by 2024: the infantilization of female leaders.

Photo: Lisa Hallgren, Dagens Industri Weekend, 2024. Thanks for the tip, @piamargaretaandersson!

Sisters Madeleine Brehmer and Caroline Cederblad run the company Sabis AB. Madeleine is the CEO, and Caroline is the chairwoman of the board. Their company has a turnover of 1.35 billion SEK and around 700 employees.


Yet they still find time to (do drugs?) play on a seesaw during work hours.

At least, that’s what @diweekend imagines.

But this isn’t new, as I said. More examples:

Photo: Magnus Gotander, Dagens Industri, 2017

1. Stena Fastigheter, one of Sweden’s largest real estate companies, was recently run by a woman (Christel Armstrong Darvik) who apparently spent most of her time swinging in a playground.


Photo: Lotte Fernvall, Aftonbladet, 2006

2. Filippa Reinfeldt, then a municipal commissioner in Täby, could often be seen sitting on a swing, shouting “I feel like a girl!” to passersby.

Something tells me it wouldn’t have been as cute if a male politician had sat in a sandbox with a bucket and spade saying, “I feel like a boy!”

Photo: Eva Tedesjö, DN, 2014

3. Filippa Reinfeldt again, now a county commissioner in Stockholm, smiling through her bangs in the spring breeze on the cover of @dnweekend. The headline: “Politics :)”

As if it were her hobby? Don’t be so serious, it’s just politics. :-)

Photo: Anette Nantell, DN, 2014. Thanks for the tip, Angela Sandberg

4. The two-time Oscar-nominated makeup artist Eva von Bahr, swinging her legs on a large, black potty (?) in DN.

Paper figure at the entrance to Ica Arvika. Tip credit: olle_kollartv

5. A cardboard cutout of a male ICA store owner giving birth to a little female ICA store owner. 😳

Okay, but are men infantilized in any context?

Yes! When it comes to health.

From Stina Backman’s dissertation The Sick Man: Popular Cultural Representations of Male Illness

In Stina Backman’s dissertation The Sick Man, she shows how ads, going back to the 1950s, portrays men with colds as whiny, helpless babies. Like in the ad for Echinagard with a man sniffling and whining:

“You girls talk about giving birth, but you have no idea what it feels like when a guy has a really bad cold. 🤧”

Commercial by Echinagard, 1994. Source: mackan912 on YouTube

I’ve actually received a fresh tip that fits this cliché:

Ad: Viterna. Thanks for the tip, @tommy_preger

A dietary supplement for men called Gladiator Blood 2.0. (Note: berry-flavored.)

Mind you, it doesn’t say the product is just for men. It could be what female CEOs are munching on to have the energy to rule their business empires and goof off for @dagensindustri photographers.

PS. The actual article in @diweekend about Madeleine Brehmer and Caroline Cederblad continues with the angle that they are powerful troublemakers: “They inherited the company from their father, acquired a hotel business in 2011, but after 14 years in leadership, they haven’t ruined the family’s life’s work.”
They are also asked: “Do you often fight?” A question I’m curious to know if male CEOs and chairmen, even when they are family, are often asked as well.