The social-democratic-inspired "Nordic model", with its agenda for gender equality, has been an important example for the development of political interventions to transform society but at the same time, it has functioned as an emerging gender normalising and stabilising structure. In the last decade it has also become the focus of antigender movements and ethno-nationalistic parties both as emblematic for the Nordic nations as well as a threat that must be destroyed to save the nation. This issue will elaborate further on gender equality as a node, a floating signifier in powerful and often contradictory discourses. We are inspired by scholarships of hope in a dialogue with articles that search for realistic utopias that might be considered to be "beyond gender equality". The included articles engage with the messiness and crossroads of gender equality in relation to the work-line, territories, neo-liberalism, religion, the crisis of solidarity and the success of anti-genderism agenda.