Spring 2006 – Summing up
- What is Nordic and 2) what does Gender Equality imply in the Nordic context?
1) ‘Nordic’ is a construction and a social & cultural reality of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, worked upon over a long time, especially since 1850’is. What they have in common is that they are more or less social-democrat welfare states.
The Nordic countries are among other things characterised by:
- high employment level of women and men
- increased day-care facilities for small children and public care for the sick and old people who cannot take care of themselves
- more than 50% women as students in higher education (mass education)
- gender segregation in education and work
- heavy male dominance in top position except in politics
But there are also differences between the countries which I will mention later. In general, Sweden and Norway are characterised by more state initiatives to reach GE than the other countries.
Also the research on gender and gender relations follow a common pattern with
- focus on everyday life
and the development of gender identities are seen as processes where
- individual identities, also gender identities are constructed in interaction with other people, culture and structures.
2) GE in the Nordic context implies concern about:
a) freedom to develop and have recognised individual identity, not group/family identity
b) equal rights to money
c) equal rights to care and to work
d) equal rights to political participation
e) equal rights to control over one’s body and sexuality.
In this summing up I shall focus on what is achieved, mainly since World War II, but also what are the challenges that remain.
Keywords:
Theoretical challenges:
Is it possible to think about dichotomies (male/female) in a non-dichotomous way?
Efforts to do so point to:
- Thinking relationally, seeing gender as a continuum, as fluent, rather than as two distinct closed categories
- Divide between equal and same and not equal and different. It is possible to think different, but equal
- Focus on processes and interaction rather than closed categories, f.ex. concerning identity-formation
- Focus on the multi-layered nature of things, events and conditions (What does something mean?)
- Differentiate between philosophical categories and empirical concepts (what is a woman?)
Political challenges:
- attacks on the welfare system threatens women’s situations (Ve)
- who has the right to define gender relations? (Haavind 1998, Ve)
- Women don’ set the rules for when gender is relevant, when it clearly is (Haavind 1998)
- the puzzling situation when GE is taken for granted, even if it is clear it is not in practice (Haavind 1998, Bjerrum Nielsen 2004, Ericsson, Kvande, Husu, Rogg, Kleven
* GE is established on the rhetorical level, but implementation is conditioned on local custom (Bjerrum Nielsen 2004, Pincus & Ros)
- What has women in common? (Rönnblom, Ve, Haavind 1998)
- Normative grounding of affirmative action (Teigen)
- Improving reconciliation of care and work (Leira, Kjelstad)
- Continued work segregation (Kvande, Ericsson, Husu, Rogg)
- Multiculturalism and GE
a) Identity
Concerned with identities as empirical realistic concepts
Women and men
Nordic women (and men) are perhaps less what they used to be than women and men in other cultures. Both
- generational changes: From socially and culturally defined identities to self-creation of persona
- Historical changes of society: from agriculture to modern welfare states securing equal rights
From a GE perspective, Bjerrum Nielsen and Rudberg show how the freedom of creating one’s own identity has increased over generations among women in 3 generations
Grandmothers: work -move out-sex
Mothers: Move-out-sex
Daughters: sex-move out-work
Challenges: Defending identity formation in a sexualised culture (Kleven)
Is it so that women today can do everything as long as she does it in relative subordination to a man? (Haavind 1984, 1998)
1990’is: Ethnicity and GE in Norway
Norwegian policies claim multiculturalism in rhetorics, but demand assimilation based on Norwegian GE ideals.
Gressgaard & Jacobsen ask: Is it OK to compare own ideals and Other’s practice?
Are all women and all men the same? Which men should be the comparative group?
Longva asks: Does Norwegian gender policies meet the two demands of redistribution and recognition in relation to not ethnic Norwegian citizens? Her conclusion is: By accepting men as norm, gender differences are underplayed in Norwegian GE policies. The demand for sameness allows for redistribution before recognition of ethnic different groups.
Sexualities
Are recognition of gays and lesbians based on sameness? (Marriage)
b) equal rights to money (Norway)
In the 1980’is women’s right to money was a challenge from the feminist movement. In 1980 40% of married women were housewives, and Dahl argued for an independent income for women – either based on paid work (sameness) or independent income for housework (difference).
Challenges today: the new pension reform demands more years (40) for the right to full pension, whereas women’s work-and-care pattern still benefits men’s pattern of continued paid work.
In the 1990’is women’s inclusion in paid work has become a duty, not a moral right. This is due to the ‘work-line’ policies (sameness)
The new right to own money through wage work is the result of the development of the welfare state
the situation on the labour market (a growing public sector of care work and growing markets for service and cultural production – where more women than men have cultivated their capacities)
women’s agency individually and through women’s movement (Ellingsæther)
But the Nordic, and especially the Norwegian labour market is characterised by gender segregation:
Horizontal division of tasks: care and service versus technical and economic spheres/jobs
(Ellingsæther, Kvande) Parallel to Bjerrum Nielsen’s scouts from many European cultures: Boys did the variable activities, girls did the fixed tasks (washing dishes)
Vertical division of positions (power, money, status):
Symbolic maleness is seen as more fit for leading positions; therefore male nurses gain leading jobs. (Kvande) Objectified masculinity is the norm for the real worker as well as for leading positions (Ericsson).
Metaphors used in analysing male dominance in academia contribute to reproduction of male dominance: Woman, as the ‘Other’ has a problem, the pipeline metaphor does not take into consideration that there are power relations in academia, ‘Black hole’ discourage women from seeking a career.
c) Reconciliation of care and wage work – necessary for GE
In the Nordic countries there are 3 models for reconciliation:
1) Day care for children
Rests on a model of dual earner families, implies gender recognition and is gender neutral (all N countries)
2) Parental, including paternal leave
Rests on a model of families consisting of dual earners and dual carers, implies gender reconstruction (N + S (+ DK))
3) Cash benefit for care
Rests on a model of gender differentiated families, implies gender reproduction, can be seen as a marriage-stabilising patriarchy (N+S)
Another optional arrangement is the time account scheme: working less or more over a period, an arrangement that seems to suit the flexible post-modern working life. Brandt & Kvande argue that mandatory fathers’ leave is most successful because there is no question about negotiation: between spouses or between employee and employer and the fact that more than 80% of men who have the right to fathers’ leave use it contributes to a normalisation of fathers being away from work for at least 4 weeks.
Challenges: Not all fathers have the right. Should not fathers have longer mandatory leave?
Is not day care and parental leave based on sameness, would cash benefit mean recognition of care rationality?
d) Political participation
Equal and de facto rights to political participation on all levels are based on the principle of justice. In the Nordic countries women’s representation in the national assemblies has been ca. 40% since 1990’is (except Iceland: 25%). In EU women are less represented, the highest proportion of women is in NL with a little less than 30% in 1997.
This question highlights the discussion:
Same – different?
What have women in common?
Rönnblom argues that women have a common commitment to change the power order between men and women.
Do women make a difference?
Lovenduski argues that women make differences:
1) On women’s issues: changes in the responsibilities and organisation of women’s traditional tasks in the home: day care for children, care for the elderly etc., abortion, GE policies.
2) On representation: increased space for political representation; men are no longer the norm for the politician
3) On political discourse: ‘private’ matters becomes public matters; domestic violence, change in discussion about prostitution (Månsson), vocabulary changes (no longer possible to say ‘I get a hard on when this woman talks’ in Parliament), women politicians as signs of modernity.
4) Christensen argues that women’s participation has an impact on the relative position of politics vs. other social institutions: Membership crisis has been accelerated in DK because women are not much engaged, but in Norway this common feature of political participation has been postponed by the integration of women. She also claims that there is a gender gap in political preferences: women are generally more to the left than men.
On women’s issues=Institutionalisation of GE policies:
Institutionalisation
Legislation
Action plans
Institutions (femocrats)
Mainstreaming policies
Reconciliation of care and wage work
e) Control over body and sexualities
Contraception
Abortion
Criminalisation of buyers of sex as defence of women’s rights to control over own body (Sweden)
Gay and lesbian rights, but in Norway the Christian-conservative government excluded defence against discrimination at work for homosexuals in religious organisations when the proposed amendments of the Working Environment Act, and recently an officer in the Salvation army lost his job because he was gay.