Among other prominent themes were: the importance of gender mainstreaming into all aspects of Arctic development as well as implementing effective tools for gender analysis at all levels of governance; the obligation of Arctic states to ensure gender equality and to eliminate all forms of discrimination; the need for making gender-related issues a priority in the Arctic; and the necessity to adopt a holistic, context-based approach to Arctic development.

The report Gender Gap in Pensions in the EU, presented by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), shows that the average European gender gap in pensions was 38 per cent in 2012. Denmark stands out among the Nordic countries with a gap of only eight per cent. In Sweden, men’s pensions are 30 per cent higher than those of women. For Finland the figure is 27 per cent. Norway and Iceland are not included in the report since they are not part of the EU.

More equal distribution with national old-age pension

Ole Beier, chief of research at the Danish ATP, has studied the Nordic pension systems in a gender equality perspective. He says that the statistics in EIGE’s report can be explained by the design of the pension systems. In a nutshell, the gender differences are smaller in countries where the government-funded part of people’s pensions is dominating.
‘Men have an advantage in countries where workplace pensions and private pension savings make up a greater part of the total pension, not least because they work more, have higher incomes and have better opportunities to save money. Women’s pensions are more affected by the level of the basic state pension.’

The differences in the pension systems explain why the gender gap in pensions is larger in Sweden than Denmark, says Beier. In Denmark, people’s pensions are dominated by the national old-age pension. Today many Danish pensioners have only limited funds saved in workplace and private accounts.
‘Since our old-age pension does not vary with how much you have worked, the gender differences are not very big. This will change in the future when other parts of people’s total pensions will increase in importance.’

Larger gap in the future

Beier says that the EIGE report only gives a snapshot of the situation, as most European countries are in the process of changing their pension systems. Workplace pension and private retirement savings will increase in importance in the future, he explains, and this will probably lead to increased gender differences. So, what can be done to reduce the gap?
‘We need to find a combination of the different parts of the pension systems that makes the outcome fair to women. For example, Danish pensioners with limited private savings receive more money from the old-age pension system.’

Louise Lindfors is leading a Nordic network focusing on women’s economic citizenship and is also chair of the Fredrika Bremer Association, which has launched a campaign called Bra Pension (which means ‘good pension’). She shares Beier’s belief that the gender gap in pensions is unlikely to decrease in the near future.
‘There are no indications that the gap will disappear in the next ten years. Instead it looks like it’s becoming permanent.’

Many pensioners below the poverty line

Lindfors concludes that women’s lower wages will determine the levels of their pensions. In addition, women take out more parental leave, work more part time, stay home with sick children more and are on sick leave to a greater extent than men. All these factors will have a strong impact on their future pensions.
One concrete measure to reduce the gap in Sweden, she says, would be to raise the national guaranteed pension. Today around 225 000 pensioners are living below the EU poverty line. Most of them are women.
‘People in this group are simply unable to make ends meet. They have to rely on their children and are often forced to cut back on food. Nobody in Sweden should live below the EU poverty line, and this should be made an explicit target.’

The problem of unequal gender distributions is widespread among Nordic universities. The trend is similar everywhere: more women than men begin and complete a Bachelor’s degree. Then something happens, and the women disappear. Female professors are vastly outnumbered by their male counterparts. The issue is receiving increasing attention and will be discussed at a meeting for Nordic ministers of education (MR-U) on 27 April.

‘The initiative comes from Denmark, who wants to discuss the problem at the Nordic level. It’s especially the situation at the higher academic levels that will be discussed. We’ll see what the meeting leads to,’ says Kai Koivumäki, senior adviser at the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Department of Knowledge and Welfare.

Men are dominating at the top

Statistics from 2012 show that the share of female professors varies across the Nordic region. Iceland and Finland have the largest shares, at 24 per cent. In Sweden the share is 20 per cent and in Norway 21 per cent, a level similar to the EU average. Denmark has the biggest problem, as only about 15 per cent of all professors at Danish higher education institutions were women in 2012.

The Nordic Council of Ministers has now decided to take action. In March, Nordforsk, which is in charge of Nordic co-operation in research and postgraduate education, decided to appoint a programme committee for the initiative Gender in the Nordic Research and Innovation Area. The aim of the programme is to produce new knowledge that can be used to both directly and indirectly deal with the imbalance between men and women in research and innovation in the Nordic countries. The programme is scheduled to end in 2020 and will for example produce gendered statistics at Nordic level, fund research on the issue and increase knowledge.

‘Nordforsk is the organisation under the Nordic Council of Ministers that’s in charge of these issues. They have prepared material for the discussion at the meeting,’ says Koivumäki. 

Expert groups in Denmark and Sweden

Also the individual Nordic countries are working actively to solve the problem. Sweden recently appointed a national expert group for gender equality in academia, and Denmark has had a special taskforce in place since December.

‘Statistics show that the number of women falls dramatically at higher levels in research. Why is that? The expert group has looked closer at this question and will present solutions based on the knowledge we have today,’ says Johnny K. Mogensen, head of the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation at the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science.

Often only male applicants

The Danish expert group will soon present the outcome of its work. Mogensen says that the recommendations will concern several different areas, including recruitment processes. 

‘Not all jobs in academia get advertised. And when they are, the criteria described in the advertisement can be very narrow and specific. Statistics show that many advertised postdoc positions lack female applicants. And when professors are recruited, this happens in three out of four cases,’ he says.

Other recommendations concern how to create a good work environment in academia for both women and men. The expert group will also address traditional gender patterns and their relevance in relation to the statistics. 

‘Maybe a person’s assessment of his or her competence is affected by notions of gender and makes women place higher demands on themselves. This may explain why they don’t apply for top positions in academia,’ says Mogensen.

Having a norm-breaking functional capacity commonly makes a person highly dependent on others, and victims of violence in this group are often in some way dependent on the perpetrator. Another problem is that society often fails in dealing effectively with these issues due to lack of knowledge and stereotypical thinking. For example, the police may not be able to communicate with a deaf person about the violations he has experienced, and a man seeking protection may be told men can’t be violated.

The project Gender-based Violence against People with Disabilities brings attention to the fact that the risk of falling victim to violence is higher if a person has a norm-breaking functional capacity. Under the leadership of the Nordic Centre for Welfare and Social Issues, experts from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Åland and the Faroe Islands are assessing the situation in their respective countries. The project will result in a Nordic overview of how this group is dealt with in policy making and in national legislation against gender-based violence.

Ann Jönsson, expert at the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare and Sweden’s representative in the project’s expert group, believes in the importance of Nordic co-operation.

‘We can learn from each other. We have similar welfare systems, history, rights and views on the topic. People with disabilities are integrated in our societies and we have strong disability organisations monitoring the issue.’

80 per cent of the women victims

A study requested by the European Parliament in 2004 shows that 80 per cent of women with norm-breaking functional capacity have experienced violence. Larger studies on violence against men and children are lacking, but indicators point to an increased risk of violence also in these groups.

‘Unless we distinguish between women, men, girls and boys, part of the violence remains invisible,’ says Jönsson.

In 2011 she wrote the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare’s training material Sällan sedda, which deals with how violence against women with disabilities can be prevented. Violence in close relationships often involves a life partner and the victim’s home environment. A person with a norm-breaking functional capacity is often dependent on a wider circle of people. The high-risk environments often differ in that they are expanded to also include for example group homes, transportation and other support services.

‘The most important thing with Sällan sedda was that the perspective – disabilities and their possible consequences – became integrated into our work. It became an important perspective among others,’ says Jönsson.

Discrimination affects a person’s self-image

In October, the EU report Access to specialised victim support services for women with disabilities who have experienced violence was published. The report is based on a study including women from four European countries, including Iceland. All women interviewed reported to have experienced some form of violence related to their norm-breaking functional capacity. One of the researchers behind the report, Hrafnhildur S. Gunnarsdóttir at the University of Iceland, emphasises that the discrimination and marginalisation of these individuals in society have to be considered in order to understand the violence.

‘The subordination of women, the powerlessness in everyday life and the constant vulnerability to harassment and objectification contribute to a self-image where many victims cannot even identify that they have been victimised. In order to prevent the violence, we need to increase the status of women with disabilities in society at large.’

Institutions most risky

Maria Montefusco, project manager at the Nordic Centre for Welfare and Social Issues and Secretary of Council of Nordic Cooperation on Disability, points to an important difference between the Nordic and other European countries.

‘We no longer have the same large institutions, the environment that has been identified as being the most risky. The Nordic studies show that violence is more common in segregated housing.’

Gunnarsdóttir agrees: housing facilities and institutions contribute to isolation, which can make it difficult for victims to seek help.

‘In order to muster enough strength to seek help, you need support from those around you. The isolation can prevent the residents from creating their own networks.’

Persons with norm-breaking functional capacity are victims of violence to a greater extent than other people, and the fact that authorities have little knowledge about the problem puts the victims in a particularly difficult situation. Due to their special vulnerability, the effects of the violence are often not the same as when the victim is a person with norm-conforming functional capacity, Montefusco points out.

Why is it important to address this issue in a Nordic context?
‘The research is scarce and there’re not many experts to consult, so we have a lot to gain from sharing experiences with each other. All Nordic countries are working with this issue, but in different ways. At this point it’s hard to say which approach works best.’

What differences do you see?
‘For example there is a difference in how vulnerable groups are made visible. Particularly in Sweden, vulnerable groups have long been given special recognition in the work against violence.

In Iceland, the issue of violence and disability has been debated intensely in the last two years and the Norwegians have inventoried and evaluated support services. In Denmark, authorities have a good understanding of which crisis centres are available. In Finland, one problem has been the variation in how municipalities have managed to create safe environments. At the turn of the year, the funding responsibility was transferred to the state, increasing the regional equality.’

What are the benefits of the gender perspective?
‘There are lots of benefits. We know a great deal about the violence against women, but the knowledge about violence against men with a disability is almost non-existent. There’s a risk that we fail to recognise the vulnerability of this group, and there are stereotypes and a lack of knowledge in for example law enforcement and the legal system.’

What are the challenges in dealing with this issue?
‘It’s a difficult topic. There’s a taboo surrounding it. This type of violence is a failure of society. It’s hard to come to grips with. The issue is perceived as very complex. We don’t really know what to do if we find out that a person with a disability has fallen victim to violence. Not everybody in the care sector is a potential perpetrator, but there’s a need for increased transparency and a discussion about the power position of those who work with these people in their home environments.’

There is a great need for knowledge and sharing of experiences, says Nilsson, who has started activities for women with spinal cord injuries in Sweden. The Nordic co-operation project, which is funded by Nordic Welfare, was initiated this spring with a meeting in Copenhagen.

What are you going to do in the project?

‘We have just started and our plans are not complete yet. But we’re hoping to do a workshop on issues specific to women at the Nordic spinal cord injury conference in Trondheim in September. We have also talked about putting together a course. We want to encourage research of relevance to our group, but also support newly injured women and point to the possibilities of living a good and active life even you have been put in a wheelchair.’

What kind of knowledge is missing today?
‘We need to make people more knowledgeable about pregnancies and giving birth. Some women are putting off having children. They don’t know whether their paralysed bodies will be able to deliver a baby. Healthcare professionals lack knowledge in this area as well. A group I’m part of has launched a website about becoming and being a parent as a person with a spinal cord injury. The project has received a lot of attention in our neighbour countries. We also need to address issues related to sexuality and contraceptives. For example, the risk of getting a blood clot increases if you’re in a wheelchair and take birth control pills.’

Why is Nordic co-operation needed?
‘The low number of women with spinal cord injuries makes it important to co-operate across national boundaries. Only 20 per cent of those who suffer a spinal cord injury are women. We have a lot to gain from reaching out to each other. Working together will make us stronger and more influential.’

What happens next?
‘The Nordic network will meet after the summer in Trondheim. Then we’ll talk about what to do next. We have also started a Facebook group for Nordic women with spinal cord injuries. I have worked with these issues for 12 years and I see an obvious need for meeting places for women. If you’re newly injured, it’s easy to think your life is over. In those situations it can be valuable to talk to other people who have lived with their injuries for a long time.’

The aim of the Norwegian project is to explain gender-related concepts in an online glossary that will continue to grow over the course of the project. The project is headed by Jorunn Økland andAmund Rake Hoffart, researchers at the Center for Gender Research, University of Oslo.

‘We’ll do the spadework and select a large number of concepts used in the field, from both Norwegian and English sources. Then we’ll gather gender researchers from different universities and discuss which terms to include in the glossary.’

English is taking over

The glossary project is funded by the Language Council of Norway and run by the Center for Gender Research. Hoffart stresses the importance of making the terminology relevant to everybody in the field. The glossary will include concepts and definitions in both Standard and New Norwegian – the country’s two official forms of written language.

‘One goal is to strengthen the position of the Norwegian language in this academic field. It is well-known that English is becoming increasingly dominant in academia,’ says Rake Hoffart.

The meaning of several gender-related concepts is subject to lively debate in Norway. One example is the use of hen and hin, two gender-neutral pronouns.

‘In Sweden it seems like hen has been integrated in the language in a different way than in Norway. Our national language council is receiving a lot of questions about this and it’ll be interesting to look closer at these words.’

Another issue that will be discussed is the gender vs. sex issue. Norwegian currently does not have a special term for the former; instead, if a distinction is necessary the Norwegians typically refer to a person’s social (vs. biological) sex.

‘We’ll discuss this further. It’s interesting that Sweden has solved this in a different way,’ says Rake Hoffart.

Controversial concepts particularly challenging

The Swedish project has many things in common with its Norwegian counterpart. The work is led by gender researchers Ann Werner and Anna Lundberg and will result in a dictionary. The publication will include discussions and explanations of concepts used in gender studies and gender research. As in Norway, the idea is to create a common platform for researchers.

Together with a reference group with representatives from Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research and various gender institutes, Werner and Lundberg are going to select which concepts and authors to include in the work with the book.

‘There may be a need to have several authors describe certain controversial concepts. One such concept is intersectionality,’ says Werner.

The dictionary is part of a writing series on gender published by the Swedish Secretariat for Gender Research. Previous works in the series deal with subjects such as education, the labour market and critical thinking.

Ownership of language

Creating a dictionary is not a simple task. Lundberg says that the question of who owns the language is of central importance.

‘So it’s important that we both talk history and are open to negotiations.’

The dictionary, which will be available for download, is scheduled to be finished in early 2016. It will primarily target students and an interested public, but the plan is to also make it useful in gender mainstreaming training.

Over half of the female employees in the Norwegian study said they had been treated differently in connection with parental leave or a pregnancy. For men, the figure is 22 per cent. One in five pregnant women chooses not to look for a job because she does not want to be perceived as difficult by the employer.

‘The results are terrible but unfortunately not surprising. Discrimination in connection with parental leave or a pregnancy is the most common reason for contacting us. It happens every week,’ says Elisabeth Lier Haugseth, head of department at the Norwegian Equality and Anti-discrimination Ombud.
The study was conducted by TNS Gallup and included over 2000 people who had a baby during the period 2008–2014.

Lier Haugseth says the differential treatment has serious consequences. Individuals lose a fair shot at employment, salary growth and career development, and society misses out on important competence.

‘We demand action on this. Employers should be aware of the gender equality legislation and stop violating it. Public authorities should promote a gender equal work policy and spread information about workers’ rights. In addition, the path to restitution in court should be made simpler and faster.’

Same problem across the Nordic region

According to Pirkko Mäkinen, Finnish gender equality ombudsman and involved in a Finnish campaign supporting the rights of pregnant women – Oikeuksia odottaville – all Nordic countries are struggling with the same problems.

Of over 700 people who participated in a Finnish study, almost 70 per cent said they or somebody they knew had been discriminated against as a result of being pregnant. In over 60 per cent of the cases, the employer was a company. In 20 per cent of the cases, the employer was a municipality.

‘The statistics only show the tip of the iceberg. Finnish dads take out considerably less parental leave than Swedish dads, so the employers are not used to the idea of men going on parental leave. It may be particularly difficult to stand up for one’s right in communities with limited job opportunities,’ says Mäkinen.

The purpose of the campaign is to inform women and men about their rights and remind employers about the law.

‘Discriminatory hiring practices are not as common anymore. However, an increasing number of people say they have not been able to return to the same job duties after a parental leave. The situation has improved for men. An increasing number of collective agreements include at least partly paid parental leave for fathers.’

Temporary workers vulnerable

Lier Haugseth emphasises that plans to have children should not affect a person’s chances of being called to a job interview or getting a job.

‘Still, 12 per cent of the Norwegian women and 9 per cent of the men said they had been asked about it during a job interview. Fourteen per cent of the women had experienced not getting a job because of a parental leave.’

In Finland, the most vulnerable group consists of women with temporary contracts, women who work part time or for a temp agency, and women with contracts not specifying a set number of working hours – so-called zero-hour contracts.

‘The employers should realise that they get a good reputation if they deal with these issues in a good way,’ says Mäkinen.

The conference was a follow-up of a meeting held in 2012 on the same theme. That conference was arranged in connection with the presentation of a Swedish government report on the incidence of violence against foreign women and their children who come to Sweden to live with Swedish men. Measures to improve their situation were also discussed.

‘The background to this year’s conference is that nothing has happened since the report was presented. The problem hasn’t been dealt with, and we wanted to bring attention to that,’ says Katarina Björkgren from the Västra Götaland county board.

What are the most important conclusions from the conference?
‘That we have a large group of women who don’t receive the same treatment as the majority population when it comes to domestic violence, despite the fact that our countries have signed international human rights conventions. Since these minority women fall primarily under the so-called Aliens Act, milder forms of violence often pass unnoticed. Majority women, in contrast, are clearly told that all forms of domestic violence are unacceptable.’

‘Another important conclusion was that the legislation enables men to take advantage of foreign women in a way resembling human trafficking. I also see it as important to focus on the children. Some men are also out to exploit the women’s children, something the women often cannot do anything about. So the legislation doesn’t lead to just exploitation of adult women, but also paedophilia. And nobody is responsible for the children.’

What is the most important work that needs to be done?
‘Sweden has a two-year rule, meaning that during the first two years, a foreigner’s residence permit is conditional on ties with a Swedish resident. In Norway, the limit is three years, but the government has proposed an increase to five years. The measure held as most important was to make Norway reconsider the raising of the limit. Compliance with our human rights commitments will be difficult if we have people in society who are forced to endure violence for five years because they’re afraid they will lose their residence permits if they tell somebody. Many of these women are from countries to which it is socially impossible to return as a divorcee. If they go back, their only opportunity to put bread on the table may be a life in prostitution.

What’s the biggest problem right now: the legislation and the way it’s applied, or the lack of information to the women?
‘Both. When women come to live with a Norwegian or Swedish man, they usually don’t know the language very well, and in Norway they’re not entitled to an interpreter. All of this makes it difficult for them to learn about their rights. They are usually not covered by information campaigns targeting other immigrant groups. We need to focus our work on the legislation, on informing those who implement the laws and on the women.’

The conference was hosted by the three Swedish county boards inVärmland, Västra Götaland and Norrbotten together with the Swedish Embassy and the MiRA Centre. The participants consisted of politicians and public administrators as well as representatives from organisations and academia. The plan is to arrange a new conference in two years to follow up the progress made in the area.

The Nordic countries share many traits. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Åland have similar value systems and social solutions. The same can be said about their views of business, entrepreneurship and gender equality.

Katarina Pettersson, researcher at the unit for rural development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, has conducted a gender analysis of policies for female entrepreneurship in the Nordic region.

‘I’ve explored the policies implemented to support women’s entrepreneurship in the six Nordic countries and have simply looked closer at how the different policies are formulated,’ she says.

The report, titled En genusanalys av policy för kvinnors företagande i Norden, discusses the results and lessons learned from initiatives to promote female entrepreneurship. It offers both broad and deep knowledge about which measures can be expected to lead to equal conditions for entrepreneurship.

‘When women are placed in a subordinate position and it is assumed that they need help, that they don’t understand entrepreneurship and business, the focus is set on individual female entrepreneurs and not on the structural problems in business-promoting systems and the labour market at large.’

Some Nordic countries have taken steps towards a more structural perspective in recent years, while others have taken a step backwards.

‘It’ll be interesting to follow this development. Not least since both Norway and Sweden have relatively new governments in place,’ says Pettersson.