In this paper the archeology of social justice is described as discourses of practices concerning Swedish ways of dealing with gender equality in compulsory school. The paper begins with some recent developments in Sweden that are important for the theme; it continues with the rhetoric in some relevant acts, government bills, and national curricula, concluding with concrete examples from classroom practices where teachers are working with gender equality pedagogy. Empirically, it provides the story of an attempt to change the pedagogical practice of nine compulsory school teachers and their pupils in a school in the northern part of Sweden. The paper takes on Foucauldian concerns of how normalizing and regulative aspects of dominant discourses operate to subvert spearheading equity pedagogy. It especially focuses on the archeological form of "the maternal nurturance trap" in classroom "gender equity" practices. The paper aims to illuminate not only the expected difficulties but also the potential possibilities in trying to change gendered classroom practices by analyzing girls, boys, female teachers, male teachers, and the female researcher as constituted by the discourse not discursively determined by it. (Contains 12 notes and 36 references.) (Author/BT)