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Antigypsyist homophobia and LGBTIQ Roma rights in the Nordics

Even though the Nordic countries are at the forefront of LGBTIQ rights in Europe and globally, LGBTIQ Roma are subject to a complex web of intersectional discrimination and marginalization. Little or no research has been carried out on this group in the Nordics, neither are we aware of any specific programmes or activities to support them. This project is a first step towards putting Roma LGBTIQ communities on the agenda in the Nordics. The project aims to provide information about Romani LGBTIQ minorities in the Nordics and the intersectional discrimination they face, including antigypsyist homophobia. The outcome of the project will be a publication with a series of public book launches/seminars in three Nordic capitals (Helsinki, Stockholm and Oslo). The publication will bring the voices of Roma LGBTIQ persons and Roma activists promoting LGBTIQ rightsto the forefront.

The project will provide an overview of good practices from other European countries where Roma LGBTIQ rights movements have grown and visibilized the challenges that these communities face. The aim of the publication is to equip organisations, institutions and stakeholders with relevant knowledge and tools that will raise public awareness about specific forms of discrimination that Roma LGBTIQ people face in order to create an accepting environment that values diversity within LGBTIQ and Roma communities; to combat antigypsyist homophobia; and to support Roma LGBTIQ persons in pursuing their struggle for equality in Nordic societies. The book launches will bring together relevant stakeholders to ensure that the knowledge is communicated to places where it is needed.

Nordic Futures: QTIBIPoC Movement Based Learning

This project builds on a collaboration between five organizations within the Nordic region that have been involved in the growing QTIBIPoC movement. Through research, the project will develop a digital and physical toolkit that stems from the experiences of QTIBIPoCs (Queer, Trans*, Inter* and Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) in the Nordic region and will include a theory and history section, and a practical section. The toolkit will assist in continuous evaluation and learning over the long term, and serve as a knowledge bank and blueprint for working with QTIBIPoCs in the region. We will also arrange a Nordic conference where the research and toolkit recommendations will be presented through workshops, discussions and presentations. The conference will host actors throughout the region, serve as a networking opportunity and provide capacity-building based on the toolkit. This will allow participants to take new skills back to their communities, organizations, and workplaces to strengthen their work with the target group across the region and beyond the project.

QTIBIPoC stands for Queer, Trans*, Inter* and Black, Indigenous, People of Colour.

Nordic network for queer history archives and activities

The aim of this project is to create a network of queer history archives and activities in the Nordic and Baltic countries and to promote the sharing of experience and knowledge and to explore opportunities for partnership, infrastructure solutions, and financial conditions. The network’s partners in Sweden, Finland and Norway have different competences and will use these to conduct their individual seminar days and network gatherings. The seminars will invite queer archives, researchers, cultural heritage professionals and artists from the Nordic and Baltic countries to share experience and knowledge, for development and for partnerships. The network will challenge previous marginalising historiography in the Nordic countries, broaden interest in queer history in the Nordic and Baltic countries, and contribute to a more inclusive view of history. The work to change this view will be communicated through an open digital platform where activities and discussions will be documented and made accessible, and include links to the different LHBTQ archives and history activities.

West Nordic Feminist Network

The project aims to create a sustainable network of West Nordic feminist activists who will become a powerful voice in the Nordic feminist movement and future feminist cooperation. The project will bring together key activists and groups from Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Denmark and Iceland in a closed seminar and open conference, to be held at the Talk Town festival in Copenhagen in May 2023, an annual festival on gender, equality and feminism. The conference will be open to activists from all Nordic countries, but will be aimed at activists from the West Nordic Region and guests from those countries will be especially invited.

The goal is to support existing NGO’s and groups of activists already operating in Greenland and the Faroe Islands and to spur the creation of new groups at the grassroots level. During the conference, a website on gender equality and feminism in the West Nordic region will be published, creating a sustainable platform for future cooperation and material sharing.

Gender-based health inequalities among migrant women during COVID-19 and public health responses in the Nordic countries

In Europe, the right to health is upheld in the European Social Charter, obliging states to take measures to promote health and to provide health care. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed differences in health care systems and crisis-management approaches across Nordic and Baltic countries. A consistent finding across these countries is that migrants, as well as women, have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic; both groups are more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19, and to be more impacted from the long-term consequences of government and public health responses. Lower vaccination intentions and uptakes have also been recorded both among migrant groups and among women.

Based on an analysis of migrant women experiences in three countries, the project aims to understand the impact of government and public health responses on migrant women during COVID-19, in particular by addressing the mechanisms which may have prevented their access to health information and/or vaccination.

Minority Stress – Interfem’s Nordic Network for Feminist Activism

The aim of the project Minority Stress – Interfem’s Network for Feminist Activism, is to strengthen the Nordic network for racialized female and transgender politicians and activists, and offer online capacity-building training and mentorship program for sustainable activism. Through the project gender equality, democratic participation, active citizenship, and political inclusion will be promoted. The participants and partners in the project are based in Åland, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Norway, Sápmi, and Sweden.

Project activities include:

  • Virtual online training and exchange for activists.
  • International network meetings in Åland, Oslo, Stockholm, and Sápmi.
  • Training of virtual trainers/facilitators.
  • Production of online training materials, webinars, short films, and handbooks.
  • Capacity building through training and mentorship of young activists.

(In)equalities in combining academic knowledge work and care responsibilities

The project aims to build an understanding of how pressures to perform affect the careers of academic knowledge workers with different family situations, especially those who wish to have children and those who cannot (or choose not to) have children.

The project will focus on academic knowledge workers, but the findings will reflect experiences of care responsibilities in other knowledge-intensive and competitive fields where there are pressures to perform. The findings will contribute to understanding the challenges and opportunities of combining parenting with knowledge work and will help to create fair policies and practices at both the organizational and societal levels.

Nordic Women Mediators Network Website

The project aimed to develop a website, an online platform, representing the Nordic Women Mediators (NWM) and its members. The website was to enhance the visibility of the networks’ mission, and the members themselves who consist of over hundred women, professionals across the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

All the members brought to the network years of relevant expertise to peace processes through various of professions within international diplomacy, civil society and/or academia. They all share their commitment to sustaining peace through inclusive and meaningful participation of women in all phases of peace processes. 

All five operational partners contributed to the development of the website by collecting biographies of all their members, over 100 women in total. The website was published at the NWM annual meeting in Finland in November 2022.

Addressing the gender and diversity paradoxes in innovation – towards a more inclusive policy design (AGDA)

The AGDA project brings into sharper focus the gender-paradox of innovation, especially in the area of green transition, while seeking to provide a knowledge base and a shared platform for co-creating better practices for inclusion, diversity and gender equality through processes of programme ideation, design and implementation.

The project consists of a literature study, a synthesis of existing evaluation and monitoring frameworks and gender plans, as well as dialogues and a co-creation platform and networking of Nordic innovation and research funding bodies, their practitioner and key stakeholders and experts. The resulting framework will be co-created and tested, with the aim of supporting a more inclusive framework for innovation programming.

Power Plays – preventing sexual harassment through memory work & forum theater in workplaces of care

The Power Plays project seeks to break the silencing of sexual harassment in workplaces of care, by promoting workplace cultures prone to actively prevent and deal with sexual harassment.

First, the Power Plays project develops a typology of existing sexual harassment prevention tools accompanied by guidelines for how to choose the right prevention strategy. Second, based on memory workshop interventions in workplaces of care across Denmark, Sweden and Finland, the Power Plays project contributes nuanced narrative cases of work-based experiences of sexual harassment. Third, grounded in these narratives, the Power Plays project develops authentic ‘Sexual harassment plays’ included in a forum theater prevention tool that can facilitate a safe, bodily and dialogical way of promoting safe workplace cultures and anti-sexual harassment literacy.

The Power Plays toolbox is tested in a variety of workplaces of care and disseminated through an independent website as well as through major care workers’ associations across the Nordic region.

The Power Plays toolbox was completed in April 2023. Read more about the toolbox here: Power Plays – preventing sexual harassment in workplace of care — Jämställd Utveckling Skåne (jamstalldutveckling.se)

Updated 27 June 2023