# Esabelle Dingizian

# Esabelle Dingizian

Esabelle Dingizian (born 1962), who sat in parliament under the name Esabelle Reshdouni until March 2008, is a Swedish politician of the [Green Party](/organizations/green-party) (Miljöpartiet de gröna). She was an ordinary member of the Riksdag for Stockholm County from 2 October 2006 to 24 September 2018 and Third Deputy Speaker from 29 September 2014 until the same closing date.

She was born in Iraq. The Riksdag’s biographical note, drawn from information she submitted to the publication *Fakta om folkvalda*, names her parents as the entrepreneur Krikor Dingizian and Alice Dingizian and gives her place of residence as Tullinge. In April 2015, speaking at a forum in Yerevan, she described herself as the granddaughter of an Armenian genocide survivor who at the age of twelve lost her family, was found in the desert and placed in an orphanage in Baghdad, and said that she had been named after that grandmother.

The same parliamentary biography records a clothing-technology upper-secondary education in Malmö, completed in 1981, later adult education in childcare and care work, studies in ethnology at Södertörn University College from 2000 to 2002, and further studies at the Stockholm Institute of Education. It lists work as a trainee store manager at AB Lindex from 1982 to 1986 and as a childcare worker for Botkyrka Municipality from 1989 to 1999. Locally she was a Botkyrka municipal councillor from 1998, a member of the municipal executive board from 2002 to 2006 and vice chair of the children and youth committee in 2005–2006, and a Stockholm County councillor and member of the health and medical services committee from 2002 to 2006.

In the Riksdag she was a full member of the Committee on Cultural Affairs from 10 October 2006 to 4 October 2010 and a deputy on the labour-market, justice, defence, education and industry committees in various periods, as well as a member of the Nominations Committee and of the board of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation from 2014. On 20 March 2008 the chamber’s order paper recorded that Esabelle Reshdouni (Green Party) had changed her name to Esabelle Dingizian. In a 2010 interview *[Svenska Dagbladet](/organizations/svenska-dagbladet)* identified her as the party’s culture-policy spokesperson.

On 26 September 2014 SVT reported that [the Greens](/organizations/the-greens) had named her their candidate for Speaker; she told Sveriges Radio’s Ekot that she wanted to show that a person born abroad could hold that office. At the new Riksdag’s opening on 29 September, Jonas Eriksson nominated her as Third Deputy Speaker and the chamber elected her by acclamation, the same day it elected Urban Ahlin Speaker and Tobias Billström First Deputy Speaker, also by acclamation. Deputy speakers, together with the Speaker, form the Riksdag presidium; they may preside over the chamber in the Speaker’s place and represent the parliament, while remaining ordinary members who may vote even when presiding. During the 2014–2018 term the Riksdag’s equality programme included a member survey and in-depth interviews which found members generally satisfied with the working climate, alongside reports of master-suppression techniques and offensive treatment, and found that women on average felt higher demands and more worry about making mistakes. In April 2016 *Dagens Nyheter* reported that Fredrik Olsson, about to become the Green municipal commissioner in Botkyrka, had registered as living in Dingizian’s home so that he could take the post, while reporters met him leaving an apartment building in Stockholm.

## Early life and family

### Origins and migration

Esabelle Dingizian was born in 1962 in Iraq. Reporting in Arabic on her 2014 nomination as the Green Party's candidate for Speaker of the Riksdag stated that she was born in Baghdad and that the family emigrated to Sweden in 1965. In a 2017 interview she said she had been about three, remembered little of Iraq, and regarded Sweden as her country.

The circumstances of the move are set out in published accounts of her elder brother, the Malmö property developer Greg Dingizian, who was born in Baghdad in 1960 to Armenian parents. *Affärsvärlden* reported in 2007 that the family came to Sweden in the mid-1960s because their father was export manager for the Swedish trading house Saba, and that they put down roots in Malmö, first in the city centre and then in the suburb of Rosengård. In 2013 he dated the arrival to 1965, when his father had been hired as an export manager at a company in Malmö, and said that an apartment and a Mercedes were ready when they arrived. He added that the family lived in Rosengård for only about two years, and that the district then, as he recalled it, was about half Swedish, with the rest of the residents from Yugoslavia, Finland and Greece. A Malmö profile, updated in 2004, described him as having grown up in both Slottsstaden and Rosengård.

Dingizian has said that her father was categorical about language: Armenian had to be spoken at home, while outside she could use whatever language she wanted. She said she speaks Armenian but does not write it well, that she has visited Armenia several times, and that her values are largely Swedish.

### Family

In the biography she submitted for the Riksdag publication *Fakta om folkvalda*, Dingizian named her parents as the entrepreneur Krikor Dingizian and Alice Dingizian.

She has spoken publicly about a grandmother who survived the Armenian genocide. At the social and political forum "Against the Crime of Genocide" in Yerevan on 23 April 2015, Armenpress reported that Dingizian had been named after that grandmother, who at the age of 12 lost the members of her family, was saved in the desert and reached an orphanage in Baghdad. NEWS.am quoted her as saying that her grandmother had been forced to leave her mother to die in the desert and never saw any of her relatives again, and reported that the grandmother died at the age of 104 without seeing recognition of the genocide. Dingizian told the forum that the generations of survivors had no right to forget the events, and that the wider world should not forget them either. She cited a reported remark by [Adolf Hitler](/people/adolf-hitler) to his generals in 1939, that nobody remembered the genocide of the Armenians, and said that such denial had to be resisted. In the 2017 interview she again said that her grandmother had fled the genocide to Iraq at the age of 12.

*Affärsvärlden* identified Greg Dingizian as her elder brother and, in 2007, referred to her as Esabelle Reshdouni, then a Green Party member of the Riksdag. He described the family as Christian Armenians rather than Iraqis, and said they had no relatives left in Baghdad. In 2013 *Fastighetstidningen* reported that their parents were living at Victoria Park, a residential project in Limhamn with which Greg was involved, and captioned a photograph of the father, named there as Greg Dingizian senior, with his son.

## Education and employment

### Schooling and adult education

The public record of Esabelle Dingizian's schooling, later studies and employment is the biography she submitted to *Fakta om folkvalda*, the Riksdag publication compiled from members' own information. The parliamentary website states that the biography is information the member has supplied to that publication. No separate confirmation from the schools, the employer or the higher-education institutions appears in other published sources.

She reported finishing upper secondary school in Malmö in 1981 on the clothing-technology line (*beklädnadsteknisk linje*). Under the upper-secondary curriculum then in force, that was a two-year vocational line with a common first year and a second-year choice between women's and men's clothing. A 1982 description by the National Swedish Board of Education, preserved by the Swedish National Agency for Education, says the line was meant to give basic skills in both manual and industrial production of clothing, with clothing manufacturing—sewing, pattern work, materials and production methods—as the central subject.

She also reported two courses completed in 1991 through municipal adult education (*kommunal vuxenutbildning*): childcare-worker training in Botkyrka Municipality, and a two-year care line (*vårdlinje*) in Stockholm. Municipal adult education at upper-secondary level is arranged by municipalities so that adults can gain knowledge corresponding to that of gymnasium. In the same curriculum period, the two-year nursing line split in the first year into a health-and-geriatrics branch and a child-and-youth-welfare branch. The child-and-youth branch was intended for students seeking work as child supervisors in preschool and leisure services, while other branches led toward nursing assistants and practical nurses. Her submission lists both 1991 completions but does not give a branch, start dates, or a named diploma.

From 2000 to 2002 she reported studies in ethnology and related subjects at Södertörn University College (*Södertörns högskola*). The college was established in 1996, after a Riksdag decision in 1995, with its campus in Flemingsberg, just south of Stockholm, in order to draw more students from families without a tradition of higher education in southern Stockholm. The college describes ethnology as the study of how people live, think and act, and of why traditions take the forms they do, with a local emphasis on cultural diversity, migration, integration and exclusion. She also reported studies at the Stockholm Institute of Education (*Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm*), without years or a completed degree. That college became part of Stockholm University in 2008.

### Work before politics

The same submission lists her as a trainee store manager (*affärschefsaspirant*) at AB Lindex from 1982 to 1986, immediately after the clothing-technology course. Lindex states that it began as a lingerie company in Alingsås and now sells women's clothing, children's clothing and lingerie as an international fashion retailer. The company has not published a record of her employment.

From 1989 to 1999 she listed work as a *barnskötare* for Botkyrka Municipality. A *barnskötare* is a childcare worker in preschool, as distinct from a preschool teacher. The National Agency for Education states that licensed preschool teachers are to work in preschool and that other staff, including *barnskötare*, may be employed when their education or experience supports children's development and learning; that licensing rule is later than her years in the post. The childcare course she reported was completed in 1991, during the municipal employment, which she dated through 1999.

## Municipal and regional politics

### Botkyrka

Esabelle Dingizian’s first recorded elected office was on the municipal council (*kommunfullmäktige*) of Botkyrka Municipality, in southern Stockholm County. The biography published by the Riksdag, drawn from information she supplied to the directory *Fakta om folkvalda*, lists that seat from 1998 with no closing year, and gives her residence as Tullinge. In contemporary county-council material she appears as Esabelle Reshdouni; a press release of 31 January 2006 still used that name.

Under the Local Government Act (1991:900), the council decided matters of principle or otherwise of major importance, including goals, the budget and local tax, the organisation of committees, and appointment of their members. It appointed an executive board (*kommunstyrelse*) to lead and coordinate administration, supervise the other committees, prepare the council’s business and manage finances. Local self-government is set out in the Instrument of Government, within limits fixed by parliament and the government, and includes the right to tax residents. Municipalities are responsible for preschool and school, adult education, social services, care of older people and people with disabilities, planning and building, and environmental health protection.

At the elections of 20 September 1998 and 15 September 2002, the Green Party (*Miljöpartiet de gröna*) won three of Botkyrka’s 61 seats each time: 1,565 votes (4.5 percent) in 1998 and 1,536 votes (4.2 percent) in 2002. The [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) were the largest party, with 25 seats (39.0 percent) and then 28 (42.5 percent). With the Left Party—seven seats, then six—and the Greens, the three parties held 35 seats after 1998 and 37 after 2002. The [Moderate Party](/organizations/moderate-party) fell from 14 seats to nine, and the Liberal People’s Party (*Folkpartiet liberalerna*, now the Liberals) rose from three to eight. The [Christian Democrats](/organizations/christian-democrats) held four seats both times, and the local Botkyrkapartiet five, then three. Turnout in the 2002 municipal election was 68.7 percent.

The same biography lists her on the executive board from 2002 to 2006 and as vice chair of the children and youth committee (*barn- och ungdomsnämnden*) in 2005–2006. Committees carry out defined parts of municipal activity, under the executive board’s oversight.

### Stockholm County Council

For 2002–2006 the biography lists her as a county councillor (*landstingsfullmäktig*) in Stockholms läns landsting and as a member of its health and medical care committee (*hälso- och sjukvårdsutskottet*). County councils were directly elected regional authorities. As in a municipality, the council set goals, budget and tax and appointed committees, and an executive board led and coordinated the administration. The Health and Medical Services Act (1982:763) required each county council to offer good health and medical care to people living in the county and otherwise to promote the health of the population; the duty did not cover care the Act assigned to municipalities. Health care remains the main task of the regional level.

The county council had 149 seats. On 15 September 2002 the Greens won 50,469 votes, 4.6 percent and seven seats, the same seat total as in 1998, when the party took 4.7 percent. The Social Democrats won 54 seats (34.4 percent) and the Left Party 14 (9.2 percent); with the Greens, the three held 75 seats. The Moderates, the Liberal People’s Party and the Christian Democrats held 37, 26 and 11, together 74. In 1998 those three parties had held 79 seats, and the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Greens 70. The next morning *Dagens Medicin* called a handover of health-care policy to those three parties the likely result of a very close count. Turnout was 77.5 percent.

On 31 January 2006 the county council’s press service said the health and medical care committee was deciding that year’s new investments, and it called the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Greens the political majority. The release named Esabelle Reshdouni (mp) as a member of the committee and quoted her on added habilitation for children with ADHD and for adults with Asperger syndrome, and on rehabilitation for children with an acquired brain injury. It put the increase at 667 million kronor, taking the health-care budget to 35.5 billion kronor, and quoted Social Democratic commissioner Inger Ros and [Left Party](/organizations/left-party) commissioner Birgitta Sevefjord on other items in the same decision, including fee-free children’s medical care from 1 July 2006. The biography dates both the county-council seat and the Botkyrka executive-board seat to 2002–2006.

## Member of the Riksdag

### Elections and the name change

Esabelle Dingizian was an ordinary member of the Riksdag for the Green Party from 2 October 2006 to 24 September 2018, for the Stockholm County constituency (Stockholms läns valkrets), which covers Stockholm County outside the separate Stockholm municipality constituency. She was returned in 2006, 2010 and 2014. Each time her personal votes were below the preference threshold, so the seat followed list order rather than a personal mandate.

In 2006 she stood as Esabelle Reshdouni, third on the Green list, described on the ballot as a political secretary from Botkyrka Municipality. The party won three seats in the constituency, on 36,365 votes (5.53 percent). Statistics Sweden records 262 personal votes for her, 0.7 percent of the Green vote there. A candidate then needed at least 8 percent of the party's constituency vote to be elected on personal votes; otherwise seats were filled in ballot order. The candidates above her were also short of that line: [Mikaela Valtersson](/people/mikaela-valtersson) had 873 votes (2.4 percent) and Mats Pertoft 549 (1.5 percent).

In 2010 she was fourth, after Peter Eriksson, Valtersson and Gustav Fridolin, and was listed as a member of the Riksdag from Botkyrka. The Greens again took three seats, on 53,788 votes (7.51 percent). She received 225 personal votes, 0.42 percent. The threshold was still 8 percent, and the highest Green share was Fridolin's 6.69 percent (3,597 votes). Valtersson's ordinary membership ended on 15 September 2011, the day Pertoft's next ordinary term began. On 21 February 2012 the Election Authority's roll named Eriksson, Pertoft and Dingizian as the three serving Green members, with Annika Hirvonen and Jakop Dalunde as substitutes; Fridolin, third on the 2010 ballot, was not on that county list.

In 2014 she was fourth again, after Fridolin, Hirvonen and Carl Schlyter. The party won three seats on 59,586 votes (7.80 percent). Her 296 personal votes were 0.50 percent, under the 5 percent threshold used that year; Fridolin received 10,988 votes, 18.44 percent. By 6 October 2014 the roll listed Dingizian, Hirvonen and Schlyter as the three Green members, and Annica Hjerling, Pertoft and Yasri Khan as substitutes.

The chamber was told of a change of name during the first term. The order paper for 20 March 2008 included the notice "Esabelle Reshdouni (mp) har bytt namn till Esabelle Dingizian (mp)". In the biography she supplied for the directory of members, her parents are the business owner Krikor Dingizian and Alice Dingizian. The assignment list shows one continuous ordinary membership from 2006 to 2018.

### Committees and appointments

She was a full member of the Committee on Cultural Affairs from 10 October 2006 to 4 October 2010, and a deputy member of the Committee on the Labour Market for 10 October 2006–4 October 2010, 19 October 2010–29 September 2014 and 14 October 2014–19 March 2015. Other deputy places were the Committee on Justice (22 January–16 May 2008), the Committee on Defence (12 October 2010–21 February 2012), the Committee on Education (12 October 2010–29 September 2014) and the Committee on Industry and Trade (7 November 2011–29 September 2014). From 29 January to 7 May 2008 she was a *deputerad* on the joint committee of the committees on justice and on health and welfare.

On the Nominations Committee (valberedningen) she was a deputy from 2 October 2006 to 4 October 2010 and from 27 September 2011 to 29 September 2014, then a member until 24 September 2018. It proposes who should sit on the committees and on other bodies the Riksdag elects, including the General Council of the Riksbank and the board of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. From 29 September 2014 to 24 September 2018 the assignment list also records her as Third Deputy Speaker.

From 1 November 2014 to 24 September 2018 she sat on the board of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond), an independent foundation set up by the Riksdag to fund research in the humanities and social sciences; the Riksdag appoints the board. From 2 December 2014 to 9 October 2018 she was a deputy member of the General Council of the Riksbank (riksbanksfullmäktige), which the Riksdag elects; that appointment ran past the end of her seat on 24 September.

### Parliamentary activity

The Riksdag open-data register links her to 250 motions in the sessions 2006/07 through 2013/14, and to none in 2014/15–2017/18. Of the 250, 125 were committee motions, 70 party motions, 46 individual motions, seven cross-party motions and two follow-up motions. She was the first signatory of 39, of which 22 were individual motions and 17 committee motions; by committee code, ten of the 39 concerned education, nine culture and six the labour market, with smaller numbers on the constitution, [foreign affairs](/organizations/foreign-affairs) and justice.

Motions she headed included the Green committee motions on expenditure area 17, culture, media, religious communities and leisure, in 2006/07, 2007/08, 2008/09 and 2009/10. An individual motion in her name, 2013/14:A294, was "Jobb för och av unga i miljonprogramsområden", on jobs for and by young people in Million Programme areas. The member page's own index lists 16 interpellation debates, 16 written questions, 13 debates on committee reports, one topical debate and two general political debates, and its session counts likewise stop at 2013/14.

## Cultural policy

### Committee on Cultural Affairs

Esabelle Dingizian sat on the Riksdag's Committee on Cultural Affairs from 10 October 2006 to 4 October 2010. She was then described as the Green Party's culture-policy spokesperson, and its motions on expenditure area 17—culture, the media, religious communities and leisure—were tabled in her name with other Green members.

Motion 2008/09:Kr335 proposed raising that area by 258 million kronor in 2009, 435 million in 2010 and 628 million in 2011 against the government bill. New regional culture funds accounted for 70, 125 and 225 million kronor in those years, to be run by the county administrative boards and shared by regional committees: 5 million kronor per county, then the rest by population, for new projects, wider access and better conditions for cultural workers. The motion called this a perspective "from below," and also sought free museum entry again and Skapande skola for every compulsory-school pupil by 2010.

The follow-up motion 2009/10:Kr3, of 6 October 2009, answered the government's bill *Tid för kultur*. It treated decentralisation as a basic green principle, arguing that culture policy "by its nature works best in direct contact with the society it concerns." The proposed portfolio model for regional funding was called too vague and likely to add bureaucracy, widen regional gaps and favour strong regions; the Greens preferred funds paid out directly at regional level. They asked the Riksdag to keep the 1996 objectives, including resistance to commercialism—defined as a market where only what many people want can survive—and opposed narrower support for literature and cultural magazines and a state label of "artistically interesting" music. Committee report 2009/10:KrU5 proposed adopting the government's new objectives and rejecting that part of Kr3. The [Swedish Social Democratic Party](/organizations/swedish-social-democratic-party), the Left Party and the Greens reserved together.

### Public positions on culture

In July 2010 *Svenska Dagbladet* interviewed her in her garden in Botkyrka. She said people who were unwell could sometimes use a garden "instead of pills," and that "culture should come from below, and therefore more money has to be redistributed." Public funds, she said, were for breadth and equalisation, not for judging quality; culture was part of welfare and should gain by reallocation, not cuts. She accepted the Royal Swedish Opera but wanted digital relays, including to Gustav Adolfs torg in Stockholm, and called culture a "climate-smart" industry better to support than carmaking. Priorities she named were a gender-knowledge centre at the Museum of Work, a broader *kulturskola* and gardens, plus free museum entry if the party won. Regional funds and centres were "not carved in stone." She said no Riksdag party opposed the Alliance's regionalisation, but contrasted Skapande skola with Jan Björklund's decision, as education minister for the Liberal People's Party, to let upper-secondary pupils drop the aesthetic subject, which she wanted kept compulsory.

In 2007, still Esabelle Reshdouni, she told *Svenska Dagbladet*—in a report carried by the news agency TT—that a shadow-budget plan for half a billion kronor over four years in regional funds was meant to break what the party called cultural life's "Stockholm fixation." Culture was "very metropolitan," she said; workers should not have to move for work, and access in one's own town was a matter of justice.

That January *Expressen*, after a publishers' Sifo survey found many members open to limiting freedom of the press, recorded her refusal to restrict police source protection or coverage of famous people, and her line that "Press freedom must remain, as far as I can imagine at least," though sexist advertising might be examined another way. She defended the ban on releasing passport photographs of convicted people, because children might see a parent on the way to school.

On 10 August 2009 *Expressen* asked what she had done for [Dawit Isaak](/people/dawit-isaak), imprisoned in Eritrea for 2,877 days while Foreign Minister [Carl Bildt](/people/carl-bildt)'s ministry kept to quiet diplomacy. She said she had signed protest lists but little more, since foreign policy was not her brief, and that freeing him required acting together rather than as one member.

## Labour, education and youth policy

### Labour market and youth unemployment

As a Green Party member of the Riksdag, Esabelle Dingizian was a deputy on the Committee on the Labour Market from 10 October 2006 to 4 October 2010, from 19 October 2010 to 29 September 2014 and from 14 October 2014 to 19 March 2015, and on the Committee on Industry and Trade from 7 November 2011 to 29 September 2014. In interpellations to employment minister Hillevi Engström she said Alliance measures, including a lower employer contribution for everyone under 26, had missed structural youth unemployment. She cited Swedish Public Employment Service figures of 18- to 24-year-olds in phase 3 of the job and development guarantee rising from 66 in January 2011 to 252 a year later. In May 2013, citing Statistics Sweden and noting that the labour-force rate counts students, she put 2012 youth unemployment at 24 per cent and asked how municipalities would work with the Employment Service after a Swedish National Audit Office review.

The Riksdag rejected the Green motions she led on the same theme. Motion 2012/13:A396 proposed no employer contributions when an unemployed young person was hired, at least 15,000 trainee places and a summer job for everyone aged 16 or 17. A November 2013 follow-up to the government's communication on the Audit Office report on young people's path to work called the reply low in ambition and asked for individually adapted measures, for the municipal duty toward young people without upper-secondary qualifications to shift from an information responsibility at ages 16–19 to an activity responsibility at ages 16–25, and for local "start centres" with the Employment Service. On 5 May 2014 in *Dagens Samhälle* she called a planned Alliance inquiry into owning a business a "mockery" and instead proposed a student-loan-style business loan for people under 26 and a start-up grant with no unemployment requirement.

### Education and disability

She was a deputy member of the Committee on Education from 12 October 2010 to 29 September 2014. Motion 2013/14:Ub211 asked for an action plan on study and vocational guidance. In the April 2014 follow-up to the bill *Focus on the young*, which the Riksdag rejected, she and other Green members wrote that applications to vocational programmes had fallen after automatic higher-education eligibility was removed. They proposed 15,000 extra places in folk high schools and municipal adult education, higher-education eligibility from every upper-secondary programme, and work placements in practical programmes. Written question 2011/12:551 asked education minister Jan Björklund how apprenticeship quality would be secured, citing the National Agency for Education that 44 per cent of the first cohort received a leaving certificate after three years.

In October 2013 she asked Björklund whether head-teacher training would cover disabilities and how schools can compensate for them; he answered. With Agneta Luttropp, motion 2013/14:So282 sought a national action plan for young people with neuropsychiatric disabilities, naming ADHD, Asperger's syndrome and autism. It cited the Swedish Schools Inspectorate on pupils who do not finish upper secondary school and nearly 30,000 people under 30 on activity compensation. She was second signatory of motion 2010/11:Ub489, which the Riksdag rejected, for a statutory right to childcare at inconvenient hours, including round-the-clock *nattis* preschools. On 26 April 2012 she and Luttropp wrote in *Svenska Dagbladet* that Alliance statements on that childcare had not been matched by measures.

### Suburbs and inclusion

Individual motion 2013/14:A294, "Jobs for and by young people in Million Programme areas", also rejected, asked the state to contract with local actors for long-term employment and social work rather than short projects. Her example was the Botkyrka housing company Botkyrkabyggen's deal with the Employment Service for 50 young people a year on six-month property placements. With [Ulf Holm](/people/ulf-holm) she proposed national rules for validating foreign compulsory-school grades, so admission to a national upper-secondary programme would not vary by municipality.

On 23 July 2014 she and fellow Green member Monia Benbouzid published "The suburb has been forgotten" in *Dagens ETC*. They wrote that suburban residents had been objects of temporary programmes without designing them, and that gaps with the inner city in education and living conditions were widening. Citing Statistics Sweden, they said only 4 per cent of municipal chairpersons in the term from 2011 were foreign-born. In June 2011 she asked integration minister Erik Ullenhag to examine unemployment among young people born abroad. Citing Statistics Sweden, she said 33 per cent of foreign-born 19- to 24-year-olds lacked a job, against 21 per cent for Swedish-born young people, and she linked part of the gap to discrimination in hiring.

## Third Deputy Speaker

### Nomination and election

On 26 September 2014 Sveriges Television reported that the Green Party had chosen Esabelle Dingizian, a member for Stockholm County since 2006, as its candidate in the election of presiding officers. She told Sveriges Radio's Ekot that she felt honoured and wanted to show that a person born abroad could become *talman*. The same report said the Green group had elected Maria Ferm and Jonas Eriksson as its leaders.

The new Riksdag met on 29 September under the senior member, [Per Westerberg](/people/per-westerberg). The Instrument of Government requires the Riksdag to elect a Speaker and a first, second and third deputy speaker, separately and in that order, for the electoral period. Under the Riksdag Act then in force, election to a single office was by acclamation unless a member demanded closed ballots. The return read into the protocol gave the Swedish Social Democratic Party 113 seats, the Moderate Party 84, the [Sweden Democrats](/organizations/sweden-democrats) 49 and the Green Party 25. [Anna Kinberg Batra](/people/anna-kinberg-batra) said that deputy speakerships had, throughout the unicameral Riksdag, been distributed by party size, and that the Alliance would not nominate against the largest party in the largest bloc. The Riksdag has since described that practice, with the Speaker's party left out, as having held until 2018.

The Chamber elected Urban Ahlin Speaker by acclamation, with Erik Ezelius to sit in his place as an ordinary member, and Tobias Billström First Deputy Speaker by acclamation. The second post was contested. Mattias Karlsson nominated [Björn Söder](/people/bjorn-soder) for the Sweden Democrats as the third-largest party. Hans Linde, for the Left Party, demanded a closed ballot so that members who would not actively support a Sweden Democrat could vote blank. Söder received 53 votes to 292 blanks, then 51 to 294. He had not obtained more than half the votes cast, so a third ballot followed a ten-minute adjournment: 52 votes and 292 blanks. The Chamber declared him elected.

Eriksson then nominated Dingizian. He cited her years in Botkyrka Municipality and Stockholm County Council before she entered the Riksdag in 2006, her committee work, and the experience and languages she would bring to the presidium's international contacts. No ballot was demanded, and the Chamber elected her Third Deputy Speaker by acclamation. The assignment is recorded from 29 September 2014 to 24 September 2018.

### The presidium and its duties

The Speaker and the three deputy speakers are the presiding officers and meet regularly on how parliamentary business is led. The Speaker may leave the chair to a deputy speaker, and the four take turns presiding, usually for about two hours. Whoever is in the chair may not speak to the substance of a matter on the order paper.

Unlike the Speaker, who does not vote in the Chamber, a deputy speaker keeps the right to vote while presiding and otherwise sits as an ordinary member. Deputy speakers sit on the Conference of Committee Chairs and may take part in the Riksdag Board's deliberations. Written communications of Riksdag decisions are signed, or otherwise authenticated, by the Speaker. Communications from Dingizian's term also bear her signature, including that of 26 April 2017 notifying the Ministry of Employment of the decision on the working environment and working time.

On 23 April 2015 she addressed the forum "Against the Crime of Genocide" in Yerevan, during events marking the centenary of the Armenian Genocide. On 25 April Galust Sahakyan, speaker of the [National Assembly](/organizations/national-assembly) of Armenia, received her; Armenpress reported that she spoke of strengthening cooperation between the two parliaments.

From 19 to 23 March 2016 she led the Swedish delegation to the 134th Assembly of the [Inter-Parliamentary Union](/organizations/inter-parliamentary-union) in Lusaka, Zambia. The Riksdag Board's report states that she gave the delegation's main speech in the general debate, on young people's influence, gender equality and freedom of expression, and that she also described the Riksdag's own work on gender equality. The embassy arranged meetings with Zambian office-holders, among them Speaker Patrick Matibini and Vice-President Inonge Mutukwa Wina.

From 17 to 19 July 2016 she visited Skopje at the invitation of the Assembly of what was then called Macedonia, now North Macedonia, with an adviser from the Riksdag's international secretariat. The Swedish embassy reported a programme centred on gender equality in parliaments, and also on innovation, women's entrepreneurship, bilateral relations and European Union integration; she met First Deputy Speaker [Antonio Milososki](/people/antonio-milososki) and Foreign Minister Nikola Poposki. On 6 October 2016 Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandian received her again in Yerevan. The ministry said the talks covered parliamentary cooperation, high-level visits, trade and cultural exchange, and recalled her visit of April 2015.

## Gender equality in parliament

### The 2016 survey

Since June 2006 the Riksdag Board has set a gender-equality programme each term, carried by an all-party working group. The aim is equal conditions for the mandate regardless of sex; in 2014–2018 the task was to show where conditions differed. News reports identified Esabelle Dingizian, then Third Deputy Speaker for the Green Party, as the group’s chair; a Green Party article in April 2018 also said she led the work. Later groups had other chairs: from January 2019, First Deputy Speaker [Åsa Lindestam](/people/asa-lindestam) (Social Democrats) with [Lotta Johnsson Fornarve](/people/lotta-johnsson-fornarve) (Left Party) as vice-chair, and for 2022–2026 Kenneth G. Forslund (Social Democrats) and Julia Kronlid (Sweden Democrats).

On the group’s proposal the Board decided on 16 December 2015 to survey whether members had equal conditions. Josefina Erikson, of the Department of Government at Uppsala University, designed the questionnaire and analysed it with doctoral student Cecilia Josefsson. Handed out at party meetings in January–February 2016, *Jämställdheten i riksdagen – en enkätstudie* (April 2016) drew replies from 82.2 per cent of members, with several tables based on about 287 of 349.

Women and men were similar in mean age (about 47), length of service and share of key posts (15.4 and 16.1 per cent), and reported a similar ability to influence the party group and its agenda. They reported speaking about equally often: a little above the midpoint of a 0–10 scale in the party group and just over 7 in committee. Both sexes still called floor time uneven, especially in party groups: 52.8 per cent of women said men predominated, against 29.6 per cent of men, while 60.4 per cent of men said the sexes spoke about equally. Committees were described as more balanced.

From demands too low (0) to too high (10), women averaged 5.7 and men 4.9. Worry about mistakes averaged 5.1 and 4.4; women aged 35 or under averaged 7, about 1.5 points above young men. The gaps remained after controls for experience and background, and being new to parliament did not explain them. Young members found the mandate harder to combine with family life, young women more so despite having fewer children. Women reported interruptions and comments on clothes or appearance more often, by almost one scale point, and nearly two points separated young women from young men. Sexist jokes averaged about 2 overall and 3.5 among young women. On social media the sex gap was smaller, but young women reported more abuse, threats and remarks on gender, sexuality or ethnicity. Erikson and Josefsson called the Riksdag fairly equal in influence, urged zero tolerance of master-suppression techniques (*härskartekniker*), and concluded that young women paid a higher personal price for a similar chance to speak and shape the agenda.

Erikson’s interview study followed in the same term. The Riksdag’s summary is that members were broadly satisfied, yet master-suppression techniques, abuse and growing threats on social media remained, in different forms by sex, and that women felt higher demands and more worry, from self-demand and from different expectations. Those findings underpinned the 2018–2022 programme, which turned to treatment, address and attitudes.

### Harassment and the whistleblower proposal

The survey predated Sweden’s political phase of the #MeToo movement. On 14 December 2017 Dingizian opened a cross-party reading in the Riksdag of testimonies gathered under #imaktenskorridorer (“in the corridors of power”). She called sexual abuse a trauma and a democratic problem, citing women kept from politics by harassment, and urged politicians not to let #MeToo ebb away.

On 21 September 2018, as she left the presidium, [Sveriges Radio](/organizations/sveriges-radio) reported the group’s closing proposals. The account, as broadcast, found many members satisfied but also comments on women’s appearance and incidents that should be called sexual harassment. Dingizian said she had not expected sexual harassment in the Riksdag in 2018 and called the result “a bit crushing”. The group proposed a whistleblower function outside the parties, for a member subjected to abuse or sexual harassment, or who had witnessed it. She said it could be hard to tell one’s group leader, that no exact form had been fixed, and likened the function to insurance one hopes never to use. The group also asked the parties to engage more.

The programme of 8 May 2019 did not create that function. It asked the new group to examine support after abusive treatment and sexual harassment, and to review occupational-health information. The end-of-term report says the whistleblower idea was the starting point, but the label was later dropped partly because it exceeds the group’s mandate. The group made clear that occupational health care offers psychologist conversations after harassment or abuse, compared other parliaments, and spoke with members from Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Norway. It proposed a lecture for each party group, support conversations raised from two to between five and ten, and “dialogue conversations” on request, for the Board on 15 June 2022. It left the larger whistleblower question open for a later term, and judged that more work was still needed.

## Public debate and criticism

### Representation

On 26 September 2014, after the Green Party named her its candidate for Speaker of the Riksdag, Dingizian told Sveriges Radio's Ekot that she felt honoured and wanted to show that someone born abroad could become Speaker in Sweden. In the longer form of the interview she said it was not only people who are blonde and have a Swedish name who can hold power. [Sveriges Television](/organizations/sveriges-television) noted that she had represented Stockholm County since 2006 and was born in Iraq.

She had made a related argument in a debate article on 21 March 2014. Of *Dagens Samhälle*'s list of the 100 most important women in welfare, she wrote that only a few had a foreign background, and that a promise by Stefan Löfven, then leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, to gender-balance government posts was not enough without diversity within each sex. She wrote that more than one in five people in Sweden had a foreign background, while figures she attributed to the Riksdag's research service put managers with a foreign background at 7.4 percent of municipal managers in 2012. Power, she argued, should represent the whole population — "yes, dear Sweden Democrats, that means everyone" — and she urged a future government to review state recruitment, citing the red-green majority in Botkyrka Municipality.

On 10 August 2009 Expressen, in a series that asked one member a day about the imprisoned journalist Dawit Isaak, asked what she had done in his case. She said she had signed the available protest lists but had not done much personally, because foreign policy was not her brief and she doubted what a single member could do alone.

### The 2016 residency report

On 28 April 2016 Dagens Nyheter reported that Fredrik Olsson, the Greens' prospective municipal commissioner in Botkyrka, had registered at the home of Dingizian, then Third Deputy Speaker, in order to be elected to one of the highest posts in Stockholm's southern suburbs. A few days before the vote, reporter Mats J. Larsson wrote, journalists met Olsson coming out of a condominium building in Stockholm; he still said he lived in Botkyrka.

The address was a villa in Tullinge that she shared with her husband, Dan Gahnström, the outgoing Green commissioner, who was leaving to become a political adviser in the Government Offices on newly arrived refugees. At a local party meeting on 6 April, of which the paper had a recording, Dingizian spoke first for giving the job to Olsson — a politically employed Stockholmer and Gahnström's closest colleague — rather than to two candidates living in Botkyrka. She declined an interview. In a short written reply she said it was normal in the party to argue for the candidate one thought best suited.

The party chose Olsson that day. On 7 April he registered at the couple's address and said he rented a guest room there. On the morning of 26 April, outside the Stockholm building where he had been registered until 6 March, he told the reporters, "I rent a guest flat at their home," then ended the interview and walked toward the metro. He said he had bought a condominium in Botkyrka and intended to move; the council was to elect him that evening, with the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party in the majority.

Under the Municipal Act then in force, registration in the municipality was required in order to vote for the council and to be eligible for the council and its committees. The Population Registration Act treats a person as resident where they regularly spend the night, or where they can be expected to after a move. Gahnström said, "He lives here. But how the hell should I know what he does every night." Asked whether it was a sham so that Olsson could become commissioner, he said it was quite all right to settle in the municipality and that there was nothing odd about it. Dingizian did not answer how she viewed her conduct ethically, and referred questions about the letting to her husband.

## Life after parliament

Dingizian's term as an ordinary member of the Riksdag for Stockholm County, and her term as Third Deputy Speaker, both ended on 24 September 2018, the first sitting of the chamber returned at the [2018 Swedish general election](/facts/2018-swedish-general-election) of 9 September. The roll prepared from credentials issued by the Election Authority did not include her. In Stockholm County the Green Party's three seats went to [Alice Bah Kuhnke](/people/alice-bah-kuhnke), Gustav Fridolin and Karolina Skog, with Annika Hirvonen Falk as the first substitute. The same sitting elected [Kerstin Lundgren](/people/kerstin-lundgren) of the Centre Party as Third Deputy Speaker, by 272 votes to 69 for Björn Söder.

She had not stood. The Election Authority's 2018 register of consented candidates, for the Riksdag and for regional and municipal elections, has no entry for Dingizian or for the surname Reshdouni. Its notified Green list for the Stockholm County Riksdag constituency begins with Bah Kuhnke, Fridolin, Skog and Hirvonen Falk, the order Altinget had reported in December 2017 after the party's internal ballot. Nationally the Greens fell from 6.89 per cent and 25 seats in 2014 to 4.41 per cent and 16 seats in 2018. In Stockholm County their share fell from 7.80 per cent (59,586 votes) to 4.79 per cent (39,042 votes), and the party again received three seats.

Her membership of the Nominations Committee, and of the board of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, also ended on 24 September 2018. Her deputy place on the General Council of the Riksbank runs to 9 October 2018, when the chamber approved a [joint list](/organizations/joint-list) of eleven members and eleven deputies of that council; she was on neither list. The register shows no Riksdag assignment after that date. The biography beside it is the text she submitted for *Fakta om folkvalda*. It gives Tullinge as her place of residence and has not been replaced, on the Riksdag site, by any later official note of where she lives or of a return to elected office.

The record after 2018 is otherwise thin. Commercial extracts of the company register list her as a board member of Agartha AB, organisation number 556741-0609, seated in Malmö, and give 26 March 2020 as the date of the latest change in that appointment. They name Greg Krikor Dingizian as chair and Adam Anthony Dingizian as managing director and board member, classify the firm under industry code 66120 (securities and commodity contracts brokerage), and include property in the registered description of its activities. The company's own site also lists her as a board member and calls Agartha a family-owned investment company; its page metadata records a change on 25 January 2022. No annual report was available without charge from the Companies Registration Office in the sources used here, and neither the Riksdag record nor the 2018 candidate file documents a later mandate, speech or interview.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/esabelle-dingizian