The Icelandic government recently presented a 4-year action plan for gender equality. One focus area is the labour market and the gender wage gap. Other prioritised issues include political representation, men and gender equality and gender-based violence.

‘The purpose of the action plan is to bring attention to the remaining challenges in the area of gender equality. It addresses the need to close the gender wage gap, to ensure equal political and economic power between women and men and to end all forms of gender-based violence. We need to attack these challenges with clear policies and structural changes,’ says Eygló Harðardóttir, Iceland’s gender equality minister.

She points out that although Iceland can be proud of its accomplishments in an international perspective, the country still has a long way to go.

Gender segregation enforces the wage gap

The gender-segregated labour market and differences in pay are issues that Iceland has worked actively with in recent years. In 2012, an action group for equal pay was formed, consisting of representatives from the ministry and the labour market parties. The group has carried out extensive studies of gender wage differences and has also introduced a trial project for the implementation of a standard to promote equal pay for equal work. The standard enables companies to earn a certification proving that their wage structures are free from gender discrimination. The certification process must be carried out by a qualified auditor and consists of a detailed review of factors such as the staff salaries and occupational classifications. The certification will be promoted more widely in the next few years to encourage more employers to implement it. The committee will also present an action plan for the elimination of gender segregation in the labour market.

‘These issues are closely linked to each other. Research shows that the wage gap persists mainly due to the strong gender segregation in the labour market,’ says Rósa Guðrún Erlingsdóttir, senior advisor to the gender equality minister.

Education key to gender equality

The Norwegian government also considers the labour market a prioritised area. Their policy document for gender equality stresses that the gender-segregated labour market has to be dealt with, for example by encouraging children and young people to avoid choosing educational and occupational paths based on gender. The document also points to the importance of increasing the knowledge about gender equality in preschools so that girls and boys will enjoy the same opportunities from an early age. Mari Teigen, assistant director at the Centre for Research on Gender Equality (CORE), agrees with many parts of the document. She says that the real challenge lies at the implementation level.

‘When the schools and preschools try to actually make gender equality happen, then how are they supposed to do it? Where do they turn for support? How do you make employers reduce sick leave among women? Right now I don’t think there is a clear plan for all of this, yet there is pressure on the policymakers to do something about it, and that’s good,’ she says.

The reformation of Norwegian gender equality policy began years ago. Former Prime Minister Stoltenberg and his green-left coalition commissioned two gender equality inquiries. A policy document was also presented – only to be abolished when Prime Minister Solberg’s and her conservative cabinet were voted into power in 2013. Since then, Solberg’s government has presented its own draft document, which was considered in the parliament last spring. During the negotiations, a large number of suggestions by the opposition were added to the document. One item that was added was to look into the possibility of giving preferential treatment to girls and boys who apply to courses and study programmes in which at least 80% of the students are of the opposite sex. Another was for the government to put pressure on the labour market parties and demand a time plan for the elimination of the gender wage gap. The government was also tasked to formulate requirements aimed to reduce the use of part-time employment in the public sector.

‘I think we ended up with several good suggestions,’ says Teigen, who was part of the gender equality committee that was behind the inquiries reported in 2011 and 2012.

Gender equality agency to aid in gender mainstreaming

In Sweden, an inquiry report on gender equality policy was submitted to the national government last autumn. One of its focus areas is how the national gender mainstreaming efforts should be organised. Both Sweden and the other Nordic countries have used gender mainstreaming as a strategy to achieve national gender equality objectives since 1997. The inquiry report finds that the implementation of Swedish gender equality policy suffers from poor governance, sustainability and follow-up measures. It also proposes the establishment of a new agency specialising in coordinating, supporting and analysing national gender equality policy. The agency will also support the government with expert advice. According to Teigen, similar problems can be found in Norway. She says that there is a need for better governance and more competence in order to implement the strategy.
‘I believe the government’s policy document is weak in this respect. The government body in charge of these things needs to have strong competence in evaluation and follow-up in order to be effective. There is also a need for better regional and local support. The propositions in our previous inquiry reports are similar to those in Sweden, for example the one to establish a gender equality agency,’ she says.

So there is a field called girl studies. What is it?

– The field emerged in the 1970s when it became apparent that girls were largely neglected in other research. Gender researchers focused on adult women, and when youth cultures were studied, there tended to be a focus on male-oriented phenomena like the punk subculture. Today researchers in the field explore a wide range of issues from a wide range of perspectives, says Bodil Formark.

Can you say something about the field in a Nordic perspective?

– One example of what Nordic researchers have studied is the implications for girls of having to relate to gender equality as a type of Nordic ideal at the same time as structural injustices remain. Gender equality is something that has created, and continues to create, normative ideals and hierarchies between different ways of being a girl. It’s probably difficult to grow up in the Nordic region without having to deal with the idea of gender equality in one way or another. The implications of this and how it affects different groups of young women in the Nordic countries are issues we’re hoping to give more attention to in the future, says Bodil Formark.

Why did you arrange a Nordic summer school on girl studies?

– The idea was to initiate a dialogue and encourage reflection around the methods used in the field. How is the research done? How can the methods be developed further? Colleagues in both Finland and Sweden had been talking for years about arranging a summer school focusing on research methods. We have thought of it as a way to develop both the dialogue around young femininity and the cooperation between the two national networks, says Bodil Formark and Aino Tormulainen, who serve as coordinators of the Finnish and Swedish research networks.

Why does the summer school target not only researchers but also artists and professionals working with young girls?

– We believe that Nordic researchers need to learn more about how these other groups work with for example young femininity and girlishness. It’s also about finding methods to make us academics better at getting involved and collaborate with people in other sectors. What knowledge do we need? Are we doing the right things?

Nordic gender equality certification in education. Joint campaign against sexist advertising. Recommendations for how to help female victims of online violence. These are some of the Nordic cooperation projects that have received support via the Nordic Gender Equality Fund, which was started by the Nordic gender equality ministers and is administered by Nordic Information on Gender (NIKK). Now NIKK has published a database with information on all projects granted funding to date.

‘The cooperation leads to new knowledge and helps disseminate it across national boundaries. Our new database will improve the potential for cooperation further, since it enables Nordic actors to look up possible cooperation partners and contact actors that have already been involved in projects on a certain theme. It’s a way of increasing the visibility and contact opportunities across the Nordic region so that organisations don’t need to start from scratch every time they want to do something,’ says Maria Grönroos, director of NIKK at Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research, University of Gothenburg.

The search function enables users to choose whether they want to view projects of a certain type or on a certain topic. The available topics include education, gender-related violence, masculinities and media. The results that come up show the organisations involved in the projects as well as their respective contact persons.

‘So don’t feel alone with your challenges. You can be pretty sure that there are others in the Nordic countries that are struggling with the exact same problems and that maybe have already made some progress. We hope that the database for the Nordic Gender Equality Fund will enable people and organisations to find each other and learn from each other’s experiences,’ says Maria Grönroos.

About the fund

• DKK 2.7 million distributed annually.
• About 40 projects have been granted funding to date.
• More than 120 organisations have been involved in the projects.
• The organisations and actors involved in the projects include public authorities, researchers, businesses, NGOs and trade unions.
• The projects have focused on for example the development and dissemination of knowledge, methods and practices, as well as on joint problems and challenges.
• The projects have resulted in networks, conferences, meetings, web portals, reports, studies and instructional material.
• The topics addressed by the projects include education, gender-related violence, men/masculinities, news media, film and the hospitality industry.

Access the database here.

NIKK’s new film about the fund in a nutshell 

In connection with NIKK’s launching of the new database, we have produced a short informative film about how the Nordic gender equality cooperation works and what the Nordic Gender Equality Fund is.

View the film here.

Contact

If you have questions about the fund, or about the projects that have received funding in the past, please contact Maria Grönroos, director of NIKK at the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research, University of Gothenburg, maria.gronroos@genus.gu.se, tel.: +46(0)766 22 92 41

Swedish women with Alzheimer’s receive on average three hours less home care per week than their male counterparts – a stunning example of how gender interferes with people’s need for care in a modern Nordic welfare society.

Several other examples are becoming all too well known: That hospitals fail to diagnose women’s heart attacks since most heart research has been conducted on men and that depression is underdiagnosed among men since the norms for this condition are based on women.

On 14-15 June, the government of Åland and the Nordic Council of Ministers arranged an expert seminar on gender-equal care, with a focus on knowledge and change.

One of experts was Kerstin Jigmo, district doctor and head of a project for a gender-equal sick-listing process in the Swedish province of Skåne.

When the rate of sick listings shot through the roof in Sweden in the early 2000s, Kerstin Jigmo and her colleagues were assigned the task of improving the sick-listing process and regional health statistics. They formed a team and set out to increase the return of long-term sick-listed individuals to the workplace.
‘We evaluated our work after one year, and the results made me irritated. We had been fairly successful with men, but the women were still on sick leave,’ says Jigmo.

Since then, Kerstin Jigmo has developed a tool to make the sick-listing process more gender equal – Genushanden, or ‘the gender hand’.

The purpose of the gender hand is to make the healthcare sector aware of five gender traps, one for each finger.
‘The general idea is that healthcare professionals should always switch a patient’s gender in their minds, meaning they should ask themselves whether they would act the same had the patient been of the opposite sex,’ says Kerstin Jigmo.

The care staff must be aware of the five ‘traps’, namely family situation, violence, somatic or psychiatric diagnosis, at-risk alcohol consumption and the rehabilitation plan.

There is a strong focus on women’s family situation, while what goes on in men’s life is not considered in the doctor’s assessment. Violence against women is a significant factor behind the need of many women to be on sick leave, something the healthcare professionals often do not know since they avoid asking about it.
‘I wish there was a standardised Nordic assessment procedure so that all healthcare centres would ask the same questions. But until that happens: Dare to ask!’ says Jigmo.

Somatic or psychiatric diagnosis is a trap because healthcare workers often think that men’s ailments are somatic while women’s problems are psychiatric. They also often fail to recognise women’s abuse of alcohol – by not asking about it – at the same time as they tend to downplay the relevance of men’s drinking habits.

A gender difference is also found in the rehabilitation process, as both the healthcare sector and employers are eager to support men to return to work while allowing women to remain on sick leave longer.

The seminar participants included healthcare workers from Åland and government officials from all Nordic countries. One of them was Åland’s Minister of Administration and EU-affairs Nina Fällman.

Half of Åland’s budget goes to healthcare, a sector struggling with high levels of sick leave among staff.

Something needs to be done and the government has promised both more gender equal salaries, better HR policy and measures against long-term sick leave.
‘The gender hand provided concrete tools to deal with the sick leaves. A more gender-aware healthcare sector would save tax money and lead to higher quality care for both women and men. I think we’ll start a project later this year where we’ll train ourselves in switching the gender of the patient and daring to ask difficult questions!’ says Nina Fällman.

School staff in the Nordic countries can learn a lot from each other, according to José Cardona López and Mervi Heikkinen, who are leading the development of the online course at the University of Oulu.

Why do school and preschool staff need training on gender and diversity issues?
‘These perspectives are often included in national curricula for schools and preschools but are not addressed well enough in the teacher training programmes. That’s a big problem. Many teachers don’t have sufficient competence to deal with these issues, and that’s something we want to change. We see it as particularly important to reach out to head teachers, since they have good opportunities to make a difference by emphasising the importance of gender-competent staff.’

What are the advantages of a web-based course?
‘It offers the participants great flexibility. They can access the information when it’s convenient. It also enables us to cover a large geographic area and reach people who would otherwise be difficult to reach. There’s a chat function where the participants can share their thoughts and experiences with each other.’

What does the course cover?

‘It consists of informational texts and assignments categorised into six themes, such as gender mainstreaming and gender equality in the staff group. The participants get to learn for example how to establish a gender equality plan and discuss the need for gender educators. The material used is based on a previous NIKK project.’

Why is Nordic cooperation a good idea in this case?
‘The Nordic countries have similar educational systems and it’s beneficial to learn from each other. It’s not enough to work only within national boundaries. We need to gather experiences from different countries in order to more clearly see the challenges and what methods work.’

How do I register for the course?
‘The first round is underway as we speak, so all you need to do is contact us. There are 29 participants and we’re planning on starting a second round in June.’

This is an article about one of the projects granted funding through the Nordic Gender Equality Fund.

Tell us about the project! What are you going to do?

We are going to hold three workshops in different countries, bringing together researchers and activists to focus on the future of feminism. The first meeting is in Copenhagen on 26-28 August. It’s going to be really exciting!

What do you want to achieve?

The image of feminist movements in the Nordic countries is outdated. For example, there is a perception that there is good cooperation with the states, but that image is actually based on how things were in the 1970s and 1980s. We want to learn more about the cooperation between feminist movements and states, but also about the cooperation between feminist movements in different Nordic countries. It seems that certain groups, such as Sami feminists, have more Nordic cooperation than others, which is interesting.

What challenges do feminist movements in the Nordic region face?

– We don’t have an answer to that yet! We’ll see what comes up at our workshops. Some overarching themes that I think will be raised are the financial crisis, the refugee issue and sexual rights. These are important issues in our time.

You will have a special focus on the intersection between gender and other grounds for discrimination. Why is that important?

– We know that it is crucial to how activists view their feminist movements. We try to have a broad range of participants in our workshops in order to include different perspectives. There is Sami feminism, anti-racist feminism, transfeminism, queer feminism and so on – and perspective matters.

How do you disseminate the project’s results?

– We have a website where we talk about the project, and we researchers will write about the results. We also encourage activists to take the discussion back to their groups and continue the conversation.

The programme was presented last week and does not bring much to the table, according to Hanna Ylöstalo.
‘The programme boasts a couple of concrete initiatives, which gives an impression of decisiveness, but the truth is that a lot of the stuff is old news,’ she says.

In the programme, the government presents measures to promote men’s health and support victims of domestic violence. For example, the funding of protected housing for victims will be increased by EUR 2 million per year until 2019, but Hanna Ylöstalo is not impressed. In fact, she says, the section on violence in close relationships is basically just a repeat of what Finland has already agreed to do by signing the Istanbul Convention.

Moreover, Hanna Ylöstalo concludes that several measures in the new gender equality programme are already enshrined in national law. One example she mentions is the requirement that all ministers must incorporate a gender equality perspective when designing new projects and policies.

‘But that has already been legislated for, so there’s no reason to include it in the programme,’ she says.

Economic issues not given enough attention

According to Hanna Ylöstalo, the biggest problem with the Finnish government’s gender equality programme is that the economic issues are not given enough attention. She is a member of a research network called Tasa-Arvovaje, which disseminates knowledge and contributes to the debate on economic inequality between the sexes. In a comment posted on its website, the network describes the new programme as a disappointment.

‘Finnish women generally carry a disproportionate responsibility for family chores, and the new programme does not make any effort to change that. There’s a risk that women’s role in the family is reinforced and that their role in the labour market is weakened,’ says Hanna Ylöstalo.

Doing their best of available resources

Eeva Salmenpohja, who serves as adviser to Juha Rehula, the Finnish minister in charge of gender equality issues, sees the criticism of the new programme as an extension of the previous criticism of the government’s cutbacks in the public sector.

‘We have listened and considered the viewpoints,’ she says.

The measures listed in the gender equality programme are what the national government is currently able to muster considering the economic situation, Eeva Salmenpohja continues.
‘We’re trying to make the best of the available resources. The programme would look different had the economy been better,’ she says.

The fact that some of the measures in the programme have already been addressed by previous governments and enacted in legislation is not so strange, she points out.

‘Gender equality issues require continuous attention. It’s important that we keep working on them.’

The Nordic countries have come a long way when it comes to priorities and legislation in the area of gender equality. But this is not reflected in the gender balance in the reporting of news. The latest study on the matter, conducted within the framework of GMMP, the Global Media Monitoring Project, shows that Nordic countries are being surpassed by for example USA, Romania, Peru and Pakistan.

Last week, the Nordic Council of Ministers arranged a side event during the World Press Freedom Day in Helsinki. Representatives from the Nordic project Nordic Perspectives on Gender in News Media were there to bring attention to the issue of gender imbalances in the news media.

What’s the background and purpose of the project?

‘Twenty years have passed since the UN’s member states agreed to increase women’s access to the media and work against stereotypical portrayals. It’s time to try to understand why the Nordic countries, which have been pioneers in the area of gender equality, still display such strong male dominance in the reporting of news,’ says Maria Edström, media researcher at the University of Gothenburg and in charge of the Swedish part of the project.

The participants in the project will closely study the current state of gender equality in the Nordic news media. The plan is to develop a joint Nordic report that among other things will include examples of best practice.

‘There are in fact a number of good examples from Nordic newsrooms despite an overall decrease in female representation in news reporting,’ says Edström.

In Sweden, Västerbottens-Kuriren is one of the newspapers that have worked actively to increase the representation of women in the news. Its efforts have been successful, as the female representation in the newspaper’s reporting of news has climbed to almost 50 %. This rate is much higher than both the Swedish and the global average. The latest GMMP study from 2015 indicates that, on average, only 24 % of all news subjects worldwide are women.

What female representation rates can be found in the Nordic countries?

‘The Nordic rates are only marginally better, although they vary a lot across the region,’ says Edström.

Sweden tops the Nordic list at 31 % female participation in the news. Iceland has the lowest rate at 18 %. The other Nordic countries place somewhere in between these numbers, with rates that are slightly higher than the global average.

The international GMMP study is carried out every five years and sheds light on how women and men are portrayed in the news media in a certain day. The latest version of the study shows that the average female representation in Nordic news media has fallen since the previous study in 2010.

What needs to change in order to increase the representation of women?

‘Overall, there’s a need for increased knowledge about these issues. But it’s equally important that the newsrooms develop strategies to keep track of the news content and of who they choose to feature in their reporting. In a nutshell, the people in news media need to become more aware of the whole thing.’

This is an article about one of the projects granted funding through the Nordic Gender Equality Fund.

According to Åsta Lovise Einstabland, chief executive and project manager at the Centre for Gender and Equality, University of Agder, this issue is becoming highly relevant. A more right-leaning political landscape in combination with a financial crisis is impacting the development in the Nordic countries.
‘It has become easier to make cuts in the Nordic welfare model, which is closely linked to the development of gender equality. In Norway, preschool services are getting more expensive and harder to get. This has consequences for the gender equality in the country’s family policy. There is a similar trend across the Nordic region,’ she says.
The Nordic countries have been more prone than other European countries to promote gender equality though legislation, Einstabland continues.
‘The EU is more individualistically oriented. But there is a big difference between focusing the work at the individual and the system level. Is it the individual or the system that should determine whether a certain behaviour is acceptable or not, that should ensure that people are able to enjoy the rights they are entitled to?’

In what ways have the Nordic countries been forced to adapt to international decisions?
‘The Nordic countries have long been forerunners but are now under increasing pressure to adapt to European and other international directives,’ says Knut Dørum, history professor at the same university and project manager together with Einstabland.
‘It’s hard to say what the consequences of this –whether the gender equality will become streamlined or even stall – will be for the Nordic countries. Everything that comes from the EU is not bad, though. For example, Norway has introduced stricter legislation for sexual harassment as a result of EU directives. What concerns us is the lack of follow-up and focus on the welfare model. Stricter laws is a good signal but how many rapists are convicted? It takes a lot of hard work to create gender equality-advancing structures. We are afraid the EU will be all talk and no action,’ he continues.
What can the Nordic countries learn from each other in this area?
‘We share a similar history, legislation and welfare model although Denmark has differed a bit policy-wise. The Nordic ministers meet regularly. There is a consensus about the key importance of gender equality and about prioritising the practical work. This is important,’ Einstabland responds.
Dørum adds that the EU is comparatively bureaucratic.
‘There’s a risk that gender equality becomes an “everybody’s responsibility, nobody’s responsibility” issue.’
What’s your goal with the project?

‘Our goal is to explore the tension between Nordic and European/international gender equality policy. What do we gain and what do we lose from belonging to an international community? And we want to reach out with our results. The Arendal Week [a Norwegian annual forum where national delegates in politics, society and industry meet each other and the public to debate and develop policies for the present and future] will be held 15–20 August this year, and we will be there on the 16th to meet the top politicians. We hope to be able to arrange a Nordic conference in June 2017 and to release a book towards the end of next year or in early 2018,’ says Einstabland.
Dørum says that they have been able to engage some of the very best in the field.
‘We believe in the project. It has a good potential for development and it would be wise to eventually also include non-Nordic universities.’

This is an article about one of the projects granted funding through the Nordic Gender Equality Fund.

The research report maps the connections between part-time work and gender in the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland. It also gives an overview of the labour markets, educational status and demography in the three areas in a part-time work perspective. The report is produced by Nordic Information on Gender, NIKK, at the request of the Nordic Council of Ministers.

The report shows that Faroese and Ålandic women have the highest rates of part-time employment in in the Nordic region. Forty-nine per cent of the Faroese women work part time and in Åland the share is 45.9 per cent. These figures are high in a European perspective. Only Switzerland and the Netherlands have higher figures. In Greenland, there is no significant difference in part-time work rates between women and men. Instead, there is a clear difference between rural and urban areas, with people living in rural areas being more likely to work part time.

‘The unique labour market conditions in the Faroe Islands, Åland and Greenland affect women and men differently as well as who the part-time workers tend to be,’ says Elin Engström, head of operation at NIKK.

‘The research report gives the reader a whole slew of recent data on part-time work and gender, which makes it completely unique,’ she continues.

NIKK has previously published two reports on part-time work and gender in the Nordic countries. The new report provides additional information with a focus on the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland.

Click here to read the report Part-Time Work in the Nordic Region–An Introductory Study of the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland Islands.

For more information, please contact Elin Engström, head of operations at NIKK, +46(0)766-22 92 39, elin.engstrom@genus.gu.se.