After the MeToo call to action, the Swedish Presidency decided that gender equality issues and sexual harassment in particular would have extra focus in 2018.  This resulted in the Nordic countries’ gender equality ministers, and even the ministers for culture and justice for example, having put issues related to the MeToo movement on their agendas.

“I think it’s great that we have been able to embrace the MeToo movement in our Nordic cooperation and profile these issues as strongly as we have done,” says Karin Bengtson, who has coordinated these efforts in gender equality during the Swedish Presidency.

She explains that efforts in the Nordic countries to counteract and prevent sexual harassment have led to a number of concrete initiatives. For example, a MeToo manual for the Nordic countries’ justice systems is due to be published and the Nordic ministers for culture have initiated training aimed at preventing sexual harassment in the cultural sector. In November, NIKK also held a MeToo seminar in Stockholm on behalf of the Swedish Presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers with participants from the Nordic and the Baltic countries. These countries have also raised these issues at the national level, and tightened the legislation in this area. For example, Sweden and Iceland have introduced consent laws and Denmark has tightened its legislation aimed at preventing sexual harassment in the digital world.

Masculinity questions a priority area

Aside from the MeToo movement, over the past year the Nordic countries’ efforts in relation to gender equality have had special focuses on gender mainstreaming, men’s violence against women, and men’s participation in gender equality efforts. During the spring, Sweden hosted the International Conference on Men and Equal Opportunities (ICMEO), and in connection with this conference the Nordic Council of Ministers held several meetings and seminars on Nordic themes. One of these focused on the roles of men and boys in combating prostitution and the sex trade. Another was about strategies for the prevention of gender-based violence.

The new focus this year for gender mainstreaming of the organisation of the Nordic Council of Ministers has been on the Presidency itself. Everyone who works with Nordic cooperation issues at the Government Offices of Sweden have been offered gender equality training.

“We wanted to make absolutely sure that everyone participating in the Swedish Presidency was knowledgeable about and able to work with these issues,” says Karin Bengtson.

Wants to see more focus on working life

Sweden’s Minister for Gender Equality Lena Hallengren is pleased that gender equality issues have received so much attention in Nordic cooperation over the course of the past year.

“The focus we have had on gender equality in general in the Nordic Council of Ministers as a whole is what I am most proud of,” she says.

At the end of the year, Sweden will hand over the Presidency to Iceland, and Lena Hallengren has highlighted gender equality in working life as a particularly important issue to continue working with.

“The MeToo movement pinpointed problems that exist generally in the labour market and we have much more work to do. Iceland is a forerunner in the area, in particular when it comes to equal pay. I think they can take the matter further and develop efforts in the Nordic countries to make the workplace safer and a place where more people will dare to speak out,” she says.

Like other important questions for the future, she highlights the challenges arising from the Nordic countries having an ageing population and from the conditions in female-dominated occupations in the public sector.

“Without decent conditions in these occupations, we will find it difficult to offer the standard of welfare that we are used to in the Nordic region. We must ensure that these occupational groups can live on their salaries and pensions,” she says.

New Nordic programme for gender equality

It’s not just the Presidency that will change at the turn of the year. The Nordic cooperation’s gender equality programme will also be replaced by a new programme for the period 2019-2022, which will set the terms of reference for the Nordic cooperation on gender equality during that time.

The new programme will focus on health and men and gender equality as two new sub-goals.

“We have worked with both of these areas previously but our aim is to put even more focus on them by making them sub-goals. In the case of health, we can see for example that men are over-represented in the suicide statistics and that women suffer more frequently from mental health problems than men. So these are important areas for gender equality,” says Karin Bengtson.

The new Nordic cooperation programme stresses that gender equality efforts must assume that men and women are not homogeneous groups. The programme also makes it clear that perspectives other than gender are important in promoting gender equality and these include background, functional capacity, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

“It’s important to jointly stand up for gender equality efforts” 

Lena Hallengren believes that the Nordic countries have a lot to gain from cooperating and learning from each other in the area of gender equality.

“Our countries are very similar even though we don’t always do things the same way. We are also quite small, so we get a lot out of exchanging experience and building networks,” she says.

She also thinks that in the future, it will be especially important for the Nordic countries to jointly stand up for gender equality as a positive global force.

“Internationally, in Europe and in the rest of the world, we are seeing gender equality issues being perceived as provocative. So I think that it will become even more important that we stick together and jointly stand up for gender equality efforts,” she says.

In autumn 2017, the Me Too movement went viral across the world. Women from many different industries shared their experiences of sexual harassment and united call for action. Women’s testimonies were given more space in the media and generated debate. In the Nordic and Baltic countries, the Me Too movement became part of the national political agenda, but what happened afterwards?

The new survey “One year after Me Too – Initiatives and action in the Nordic and Baltic countries” was developed on the initiative of the Swedish presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2018. The material was compiled by NIKK and is based on data from these countries and supplemental interviews with key individuals.

Four areas in particular have emerged from the survey in which these countries have acted based on Me Too: New and updated legislation, mission and organisation, requirements for employers, and surveys and spreading knowledge.
In the Nordic countries, sexual harassment is prohibited in the workplace and in the community at large. Legislation in each of these countries regulates this in working life. There is also criminal law legislation which makes it clear that sexual harassment is a crime that must be reported to the police. But the legislation are not always entirely clear and need to be supplemented and developed further. In the wake of Me Too, many countries in the Nordic and Baltic regions, have strengthened their legislation concerning abuse, harassment and sexual violence against women.

Another key issue has been ensuring compliance with the legislation. In the Nordic countries, employers have a responsibility to create a work environment that is free from sexual harassment. In connection with Me Too, various steps have been taken to strengthen and expand the remit of the supervisory authorities, with the aim of empowering them to ensure that employers know about the legislation and shoulder their responsibilities under it. In several countries, the chain of justice has also been discussed and steps have been taken to strengthen the judicial follow-up of sexual harassment.

But to put a stop to sexual harassment, you need more than just political will: decisions must be well anchored, and abuses must be prevented and combated at every turn – at work, at school and in the public domain. This requires broad cooperation and dialogue between social institutions and other parties. In the wake of Me Too, broad-scale information campaigns have been initiated targeting employers as well as other civil society actors. Several countries have also initiated surveys and investigations aimed at gathering facts and knowledge on which to base ongoing efforts to put a stop to sexual harassment.

NIKK’s survey of initiatives and action was presented at a seminar in Stockholm in November. It was attended by government representatives from the Nordic and Baltic countries, as well as stakeholders from civil society, the Nordic Association, and the international arena. One of the speakers was Åsa Regnér. When the Me Too campaign was gathering momentum, she was serving as the Minister for Gender Equality in Sweden. Today, she is the Deputy Executive Director of UN Women.
“When the Me Too movement began, in my role as the Minister for Gender Equality I felt immediately  that I wanted to act. But what struck me was that in Sweden we already had the regulatory framework in place. It was clear what the employer and the trade unions were to do, but almost nobody was doing anything! It was a shock.”
In her view, a positive aspect of the campaign in Sweden was that it really was a wake-up call which led to additional political action. On the global stage, Åsa Regnér has seen how Me Too is continuing as an ongoing, live debate. But she also expresses concern over an ongoing backlash against gender equality and questions related to sexual and reproductive health.

NIKK’s survey highlights various initiatives that have been taken in the Nordic and Baltic countries. Estonia amended in its criminal law legislation in 2017 to introduce sexual harassment as a separate category of offence. One of the participants at the conference was Kadi Viik, editor of the feminist platform and Internet magazine Feministeerium, which published the Me too manifesto in Estonia. In her opinion, the campaign has had a huge impact in Estonia and been discussed at many levels.

According to Kadi Viik, the political response in the wake of Me Too in Estonia has been mixed. She believes that one of the reasons for this is the influence of conservative forces on current politics.
“The government is so afraid of extremists gaining more power that they are being accommodating,” she says.

Read NIKK’s survey “One year after Me Too – Initiatives and action in the Nordic and Baltic countries” here.

In recent years, several studies have shown that employees in the hotel and restaurant industry experience more sexual harassment than in most other industries. The #MeToo movement helped to further define what constitutes sexual harassment in the workplace and how employees perceive it. But what about those who are responsible for ensuring employees’ safety? Little is known about how management deals with sexual harassment, but a new report, “Sexual harassment in the Scandinavian hotel industry: Experiences from three hotels in Denmark, Norway and Sweden”, provides some answers.

“We need more knowledge from the employer’s perspective about sexual harassment. How does the management view it and how do they prevent it? This is why we took the initiative on this report,” says Rønnaug M. Retterås, Senior Adviser at the Norwegian Equality and Anti-discrimination Ombudsman (LDO) and project manager for the initiative. LDO has also collaborated with its Nordic sister institutions: the Equality Ombudsman in Sweden and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

“Must create more transparency”

In the report, the managers of three large hotel chains from each of the three Nordic countries were interviewed about their understanding and handling of sexual harassment.

“The lack of transparency around the topic makes it difficult for management in the industry to bring such cases to light, even though the #MeToo movement may have led to greater openness,” says Mona Bråten, a researcher at the Fafo Research Foundation who is responsible for the report along with her colleague Beate Sletvold Øistad. The research has been funded by the Nordic Gender Equality Fund, which is administered by Nordic Information on Gender (NIKK) under the Nordic Council of Ministers.

“One of the most important things we can do to prevent sexual harassment is to create a positive psychosocial working environment where difficult topics can be discussed,” says Bråten. This means, for example, including questions about sexual harassment in employee surveys. This is seldom done today.

But the large hotel chains often have their own sexual harassment policies.

“However, the report shows that there are complex aspects of the working environment that are not easy to regulate in detail. The solution is to handle the cases in the context in which they occur,” Bråten explains.

Worse with colleagues than guests

If a guest harasses an employee, the guest can be asked to leave the hotel. But it is more complicated to find a solution when an employee harasses a colleague. According to the researchers, the lack of a clear definition of sexual harassment, as well situations that fall into a grey zone, mean that managers find it difficult to deal with such cases.

It seems as if employers are not fully aware of the alternatives for dealing with sexual harassment when it occurs, Retterås of LDO believes.

“Firing people or getting them to resign is not the only option. It’s understandable that a manager is reluctant to get involved in the case, but there are a variety of measures that can be used. The report shows that these must be clarified better,” she says, and mentions that managers can call the parties into a meeting or issue a reprimand. In this case, it is critical that the managers have done their homework.

“The management and the employees must try to agree on some boundaries for what is acceptable behaviour. Then the managers have a guidepost for holding such a meeting and it can be easier to get people to change direction. You could say, for example: ‘We agreed that is was not appropriate to send naked photos to each other, but now that you’ve done it, what do you think about it?” Retterås recommends.

Aims to be the best

The report was recently presented at a seminar on preventing and handling sexual harassment in the hotel and restaurant industry in Oslo, which was attended by public authorities, employer organizations and labour unions from Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

“Sexual harassment, together with gender equality, is the most difficult topic for employers in the tourism industry,” said Kristin Krohn Devold, Managing Director of the Norwegian Hospitality Association.

“This is why it’s even more important that the management speaks loudly and clearly. The objective is that tourism will be an attractive industry for women. We aim to be the best at dealing with sexual harassment,” said Krohn Devold.

New law in Denmark

Several of the participants discussed the cooperation between employer and employee organizations to fight sexual harassment. Lina Tidell of the Swedish employers’ organization Visita and Annica Hedbrant of the labour organization Unionen talked about the online course “Everyday fairness”, which provides training on the organizational and social working environment for employees and management.

“The training works well precisely because it addresses specific types of behaviour, and doesn’t talk only in vague terms about sexual harassment. Everyone must take responsibility and it must be worked on all the time. The management cannot just have a policy, but must actively support and model the culture they want to implement,” said Annica Hedbrant of the labour organization Unionen.

Peter Breum, a labour rights expert from Denmark, agreed that managers must take responsibility for the company culture. But it is often said that the social atmosphere in the industry is tough and that employees must therefore tolerate more than in other industries. A new Danish law contradicts this notion.

“If the atmosphere in the industry is rough, should you tolerate it? No. The employer must set the parameters for how it is acceptable to act,” said Breum.

What happens after #MeToo?

The report on sexual harassment in the hotel and tourism industry should actually have resulted in a handbook for the industry. But due to the #MeToo movement, the work to prepare the handbook was accelerated and was completed in August. The handbook, called “Draw the line”, presents six measures that can be used to prevent and deal with sexual harassment. In Sweden, a similar handbook is in the final phase of completion.

Towards the end of the seminar, several participants pointed out how the efforts to prevent sexual harassment have been affected by the #MeToo movement.

“Suddenly the spotlight has shifted from the victim to the perpetrator, and requires that they actually do something about it. The work to prevent sexual harassment has taken a huge leap forward,” said Agneta Broberg, the Swedish Equality Ombudsman.

“But the work against sexual harassment must also continue after the lights from #MeToo fade, because the problem is not so easy to solve,” said Arve Semb Christophersen, Regional Director at the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority.