Kajsa Ekis Ekman is a Swedish author and journalist, born 1980 in Stockholm, Sweden. She is the author of several works about the financial crisis, women's rights and trafficking. She is the founder and editor in chief of online magazine Parabol Press. She writes for the culture section of the Swedish major daily Aftonbladet and has also been published internationally in the Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique and Feminist Current. She was named the Swedish-Greek of the Year 2015, awarded the Sara Lidman Prize in 2015 and the Lenin Prize in 2020. She has a Master in Literature Studies and Journalism from Södertörn University and Journalisthögskolan in Stockholm, respectively. She has founded various activist groups such as the climate action alliance Klimax and Swedish Feminist No To Surrogacy.
Ekman is the author of four books. Her book Being and Being Bought – Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self (Spinifex, 2013) has been translated into four languages compares the sex industry and the surrogacy industry, and how they both commodify women's bodies. She has given more than a thousand lectures internationally on the topic, including Sydney Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The European Parliament, Parliament of France, Chamber of Deputees in Mexico, Cuban Institute of Sexuality CENESEX, Serbian Woman's Festival, Massachusetts Turn Off the Red Light Campaign, Battle of Ideas UK, the Swedish Police Force, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Universidad de Alicante.
Her book Stolen Spring (Kedros, 2014) describes how the eurocrisis affected the Greek economy, was a bestseller in Greece and won her the award Swedish-Greek of the Year 2014. Her Ted Talk “Everybody Speaks About Capitalism, But What Is It?” has been viewed 232 000 times.
Her book On the Meaning of Sex (Polaris, 2021) has been translated into English and Spanish. It is a book that has been noted “the most debated book of the year” in Sweden, and has been number one on the list of most sold non-fiction books. (Adlibris) It is a critique of gender identity theory and the idealist definition of sex and gender as a personal choice rather than a material reality and a base of oppression in patriarchy.
Ekman has appeared on several English-speaking podcasts and in conferences speaking on the book “On the Meaning of Sex”, including The Long Road to Equity for Women in Medicine at Stony Brook University, NY, Savage Minds Podcast and Engendered Podcast.
What led her to become a writer was early reading of de Beauvoir, Marcuse, Dostoyevskiy, Tolstoy, Daphne du Maurier, Somerste Maugham, Ngugi, B. Traven and Strindberg.
She published her first article i Brand magazine 2004 and started writing for DN På Stan in 2003.
In 2001-2002, she worked in the US and Latin America in restaurants and taquerias. In 2003-2004, she lived at her grandmother's house in Svedmyra, Stockholm. Her mother passed away in 2004. She lived in France 2004-2005, in Catalunya 2005-2007 and in Greece 2011-2014.
