Nordic Gender Equality Policy in a Europeanisation Perspective

Knut Dørum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367367459
• eBook ISBN: 9781000767315
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Gender & The Law
• Index: Law

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the role Nordic countries have played as exporters and importers of gender equality policies, and of how Europeanisation has framed the development and harmonisation of legislation and politics between the countries, with global consequences.

The diverse range of contributors present the argument that the European Union increasingly exerts influence on Nordic equality policy, without undermining the recent significance of the Nordic countries' gender policy as models for countries all over the world. It demonstrates that differentiation and variation at national and regional levels in the Nordic countries, as well as in Europe in general, matter as much as integrational processes and inner adaptation to EU legislation and international laws. This book explores the limitations of the Europeanisation process and the political diversity of national and regional policies, together with the crucial ways practices in the family life and the labour market concerning gender equality depend on cultural and religious norms and group interests.

Nordic Gender Equality Policy in a Europeanisation Perspective is a key text for students and researchers seeking to understand the interrelations of Nordic and European Union gender policies.

1
Perspectives on Nordic gender equality policy and Europeanisation

Knut Dørum

The Nordic countries are often held as European front-runners in the area of gender equality. At the same time, gender equality policy is becoming more and more internationalised. The legislation in the Nordic countries is increasingly affected by European and international regulations, such as the Beijing Platform in 1995 and the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997. At a European level, national policy is influenced by EU laws and decisions. This book examines to what extent the Nordic countries have served as exporters of gender equality policy since the 1990s, as well as how much they have had to adapt to EU legislation and international decisions in the same period. Moreover, the book seeks to connect case studies containing local, regional and national examples to overall discussions about Europeanisation and Nordic adaptation to and import of new gender policy.

The authors of this book are presenting findings that uphold the impression that the EU increasingly exerts influence on Nordic equality policy, but without undermining the significance of the Nordic countries’ gender policies as models for countries all over the world for the last two to three decades. On the other hand, this book proves also that differentiation and variation at national and regional levels in the Nordic countries as well as in Europe in general matter as much as integrational processes and inner adaptation to EU legislation and international laws. This book explores not only that the Europeanisation process has had its limitations and that national and regional policies generate political diversity, but also that practices in the family life and the labour market concerning gender equality depend on cultural and religious norms and group interests.

Gender equality policies

Gender equality policies go beyond policies of civil rights and general discrimination policies. Basically, gender equality policies serve to reduce or eliminate gender inequalities and to promote equality between women and men (Bell 2008; Baudot and Revillard 2014; Geddes and Guiraudon 2004). Since the 1980s, European countries have taken a number of steps to ensure men and women equal access to higher education and equal opportunities for participation in the labour force and in choice of occupation, and to protect them from sexual harassment and discrimination in general. For instance, care arrangements – public daily care institutions and parental leave – tend to be used to create a more just division of responsibilities within households between men and women, and equal income for women and men is still part of the political agenda. Also implemented in several countries are gender quotas on corporative boards, and women-friendly recruitment policies in political parties, the business world and academia, all of which are designed to increase the percentage of women in scholarly and administrative positions. Still, women do most of the housework, they are often employed part-time and they continue to be recruited into a gender-segregated market where female-dominated professions are less well paid than male-dominated professions. Furthermore, pregnant women are discriminated against in workplaces, and gender-based violation has gained strong recognition in most countries as a social problem, demanding the attention and focus of the authorities. Domestic violence, rape, prostitution and human trafficking seem to be major barriers to gender equality. Consequently, the EU has developed a number of measures for the prevention of these forms of violence, with a view to protecting the victims as well as responding to the perpetrators.

It is hardly a controversial claim that decisive driving forces behind gender equality policies for a long time were to be found in grassroots movements in the form of activism of organisations and spokespersons in the public sphere, such as demonstrations and marches in the streets, in addition to debates and statements in the press, together with fictional and non-fictional narratives within film, theatre, literature, etc. The success of the waves of feminism in the 1980s and 1990s lay in the process of bringing a new perception and ideology of gender relations from extra-parliamentary milieus into the political parties and organisations, and finally of making them a crucial part of the governments’ political agendas and programs. When the #MeToo campaign emerged in 2017, it soon turned out to be one of the most effective and powerful popular movements outside political arenas in history, leading to the dismissal of men in top positions after accusations, statements and communication in social media, activists taking to the streets with slogans and proclamations, and debates about social norms and power structures.

The first wave of feminism which occurred in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century had in most cases no intension of severely challenging society and social order. The feminists of this era were anxious to point out that they did not seek to disrupt society and to unseat God (Magarey 2001), and their goals appeared to be the promotion of women’s education and their opportunities of being participants in the public sphere as authors and spokes-women, and as employees and entrepreneurs in industry and trade, but above all, the struggle for female suffrage. It is not surprising that the suffragettes and other female activists in their strategies from the 1880s and 90s onwards adopted a strategy that emphasised the housewife as the natural female role model. The struggle for female suffrage dealt mostly with the issue that women’s functions and tasks in society should be more appreciated and defined as equally important to men’s roles. Being different from men and complementary in relation to them provided The legitimacy for the feminists in their requirement of equal civil and political rights between men and women. Women had resources, experiences and functions that both justified political representation and equal rights, and that also lay behind the conception that women possessed a moral superiority compared to men (Tandon 2008).

The second wave of feminism taking place during the late 1960s and 70s brought new aspects and represented a shift from reform to revolution. While the first wave was basically a bourgeois movement, major parts of the second wave consisted of elements of radicalism and socialism, and it also became linked to discrimination with regard to racism and sexual orientation – expressed in terms like black feminism and lesbian feminism. Above all, the second wave conveyed a willingness to create new gender roles and destroy the patriarchal order. It now became urgent to maintain a new understanding of the subordination of women. They were not suppressed only in a political way, because the repressive character of the patriarchal system was endemic in all relations with men. Therefore, women needed to challenge the dominant representations of men and masculinity by reshaping the structure of gender relations (Whelehan 1995).

The third wave of feminism emerging by the mid-1980s onwards, developing further in the 1990s, and then becoming a global phenomenon in the following decades, is not so easy to define due to its complexity and heterogeneous character (Gillis, Howie and Munford 2007; Budgeon 2011). Some common features regarding the third wave of feminism are to be found in the criticism against the dualism and stereotypes – man and woman as counterparts – which the feminists in the 1960s and 70s were eager to utilise. A focus on the individual choice of life, with an opportunity to combine or transcend various gender role models – and also choose traditional ones – has characterised the feminism of the younger woman generations. Individualism and diversity might be seen as a reaction against and a willingness to reform the more collective and orthodox feminism dominating prior to the 1990s.

To a certain extent, however, the modern version of feminism has, according to the critics, adopted and been a victim of the normalisation of the individualism designated by neoliberalism. Major objections have been raised to what has been called the philosophy of feminists that seeks market-based solutions and a privatisation of women’s lives. The implications are thought to be that women should take responsibility for their own economy and way of living and physical safety and for not being exposed to harassment. Quite a few commentators have maintained that this would lead to the deterioration of female life conditions and result in a situation where many women would have to encounter discrimination and find themselves being marginalised. However, many feminist groups stand out as heavy opponents of neoliberalism, capitalism and globalisation. They react to the backlash against women’s rights and the neoconservative and neoliberalist attacks that have undermined feminism. Not surprising, the third wave is also characterised by the emphasis on a more visible and extroverted activism in social media and in the streets. It is important to note that there is also a strong continuity between the major parts of the second and the third waves regarding the ambitions to make fundamental changes in the gender-role structure (Evans 2015).

Mainstreaming and types of strategies

The public policy concept of ‘gender mainstreaming’ emphasises that policies should take many forms and are deployed in numerous sectors (in terms of rights, political representation, equality at work, work and family life balance, violence, etc.). This implies that gender runs through all aspects of the political process and all public policy areas. Internationally, the gender mainstreaming concept has been challenged by a much wider conception of equality – intersectionality and multiple discrimination, which looks at various forms of discrimination, such as age, disability, sexual orientation, race and ethnic origin. This has led to a weakening of the focus on the gender aspect, but it simultaneously enforced the importance of individual rights in gender equality politics (Skjeie and Langvasbråten 2009; Krizsan, Skjeie and Squires 2012).

Dealing with political strategies of gender equality, we find three main manifestations or principles: equal treatment, equal opportunities and equal impact (Booth and Bennett 2002; Squires 2007). Equal treatment accentuates equal rights implemented through the law and is for instance manifested in Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, which makes equal pay for equal work an objective. A modern approach to this strategy is law actions against sexual harassment and gender discrimination in connection with job recruitment. At the EU level, the anti-discrimination programs have expanded in the legislation from the year 2000 onwards. Equal opportunities relate to positive action and positive discrimination as necessities in order to balance structural and societal barriers and disadvantages for women, or create a more fundamental change in terms and preconditions concerning gender relations. Equal impact might go even further than the two other principles, by aiming at securing for women opportunities to take part in decision making, such as for instance the prescription of having 40 per cent female representation on the boards of listed companies and public enterprises (Jacquot 2015).

Europeanisation and European integration

‘Europeanisation’ refers mainly to how interactions between the EU and its member states have made an impact on individual state policies, practices and politics. The term is often linked to the outcome of EU policies on a national level. This is known as ‘top-down’ Europeanisation. Europeanisation must also be understood as an effect of how regions, such as the Nordic countries, influence and shape the policy making and institutional development in the EU. This is called ‘bottom-up’ Europeanisation. As implied, Europeanisation includes non-member states in Europa, such as Norway and Iceland, which have become more and more integrated into the Union (Börzel and Risse 2003).

Europeanisation can be regarded as two different strategies. The first one is how the individual states strive to adapt to legislation and policies created by the central government of the EU. The second one is how diffusion of ideas and policies across the borders generates shared norms, adaptions and regulations among European states leading to a homogenising process (Börzel and Panke 2013). However, the limitation of Europeanisation seems to be that both countries and sectors adapt differently to new laws and standards. That means that the outcome of Europeanisation may vary sufficiently across regions and countries (Wiener 2006). Transnational norm diffusion has gained increasing attention in more recent research on Europeanisation. Studies show that diffusion and variation are as important as the standardising effects of the legislation and policies made in Bruxelles (Poguntke 2007; Holst, Skjeie and Teigen 2019).

The term ‘Europeanisation’ reveals that methodological nationalism is no longer compatible with any analysis of gender equality policy or political approaches to fighting various forms of discrimination. The national contexts can only to a limited extent explain policies and practices as intraregional, and international regimes have achieved primacy in relation to national politics and legislation. In this evolvement, EU policies play a significant role. Europeanisation is thus about various domestic adaptations to both EU and international policies, but also about how regions exert influence on central political institutions within the EU and internationally (Kantola 2014).

The concept of Europeanisation contains many similarities with the so-called European integration. Both concepts deal with institutionalisation of a common political system, with the consequences this may have on domestic structures, and with the comparative differences between the countries in this process of integration. The concepts differ from each other in the sense that Europeanisation comprises more widely the influence of policies and practices within Europe and the process of diffusion, and decisive factors in this connection. Moreover, it also entails bottom-up dynamics, that is to say the influence performed by grassroots movements, mass media, spokespeople for particular groups and sector interests, various social and political organisations, etc., and in general the spreading of ideas and strategies outside formal political institutions.

European integration is a perspective often focusing on the outcome of Europeanisation, and it is often measured in formalised legislation and policies. However, European integration does not exclude the perspective of informal adaptations of policies, strategies and ideas concerning gender equality. Therefore, one might say that Europeanisation and European integration in many ways appear to be overlapping concepts (Poguntke et al. 2007). However, European integration and Europeanisation should not be treated as totally dominant factors regarding the shaping of the political systems in general, and of the gender policies in particular. National policies seem to have survived, and the integration process reveals certain limitations. Furthermore, the British exit and political dissatisfaction about the union in several countries signal that disintegration in the future might be a central driving force in the EU member states. This is paralleled by a major criticism directed towards the EU policies going on since the 2000s for conducting a marginalisation of gender equality policy together with a strong emphasis on market norms, economic rationalisation and growth, which also correspond with cuts in public expenditures (Jacquot 2015). Finally, new trends among young women have shifted the focus away from career and self-realisation in professional life to a desire for self-determination with regard to the priorities of the family and the caring of children, including the opportunity of choosing a traditional family life (Melby, Ravn and Wetterberg 2008).

The Nordic model

In 1990, Gösta Esping-Andersen launched the concept of the ‘Nordic Model’, which he coined to describe the transformation that the Nordic countries underwent in the 1930s and 1940s when the social democratic parties seized governmental power and established a new welfare state ideology followed by reforms. An essential part of the social-democratic ideology and politics was to liberate people from the market and to abolish labour functioning as a commodity; the latter he designated as ‘decommodification’. Esping-Andersen did not only underline the Nordic model as expressing social and economic generosity and universalism. First of all, the Nordic Model came to transfer tasks related to reproduction in society (the caring of children and the elderly, upbringing, socialization of children and youth, etc.) from families and households to a welfare state, together with securing and expanding employment through direct and indirect measures, from which not least women benefited. According to Esping-Andersen, these measures have maximised women’s economic independence (Esping-Andersen 1990, 2000). The defamilialisation has managed to unburden households and diminish the dependence on kinship by means of family allowances, tax deductions and care services for children and the elderly.

Helga Maria Hernes has characterised Esping-Andersen’s Nordic Model as ‘woman friendly’. She has stated that women are not subjugated to harsher choices between children and work than men and has pointed to the fact that women’s labour market participation is almost the same as men’s. Moreover, she sees the Nordic countries as sharing major common strategies with regard to gender equality policies (Hernes ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Perspectives on Nordic gender equality policy and Europeanisation
• 2 Same-sex families: Nordic harmonization and ties to Europe
• 3 How could equal parental leaves be promoted in Europe? Lessons from Swedish lesbian families
• 4 Swedish Dads on export: On the relationship between fatherhood and “Swedishness” in strategic communication of Swedish family policy abroad, 1968–2017
• 5 Bureaucracy of gender equality: Europeanisation in Nordic context?
• 6 “Lessons from Norway”: How gender quotas on corporate boards were transformed from unthinkable to exportable
• 7 Excellence, gender and academic research funding
• 8 Fathers’ quotas as gender equality policies
• 9 Europeanization processes and contemporary politics of the body: Stalking and online harassment
• 10 From quotas of men to gender mainstreaming: Gender equality policies in academia from the 1960s to the 2000s
• Index