Notwithstanding the welfare state, employed mothers in Scandinavia experience just as much conflict between work and family life as mothers in Southern Europe, but the Scandinavian mothers are happier.
When the men’s national team loses a match they are called “sissies”, and women who are good at football “play like men”. Both men and women are the losers when gender stereotypes are used in sports journalism, according to Professor Gerd von der Lippe.
By changing the name to the Committee for Gender Balance in Research, the KIF Committee has received a stricter mandate for its work. “This sends a signal that gender equality involves more than equal rights,” says Mari Teigen, Research Director at the Institute for Social Research (ISF).
Is forced marriage an immigration problem or violence against women and children? According to researcher Anja Bredal, the Norwegian authorities have not totally made up their minds.
Medical evidence in sexual assault cases may increase the odds of conviction, but the police often fail to use the documentation gathered at sexual assault centres. What determines whether or not the police make use of the evidence available?
Raising small children without stress, good health and a sense of fairness in the marriage – this is the experience of spouses in the 1970s who shared the responsibility of staying at home with the children while working part-time. Sociologist Margunn Bjørnholt has interviewed these couples 30 years later.
In 1959, the Norwegian Parliament ended the practice of establishing lower wage scales for women than for men.
“The Norwegian Employers’ Association used deliberate, cynical means to ensure that female-dominated jobs remained low paying. The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) failed the cause of equal pay by accepting this,” says Professor Inger Bjørnhaug.
Most pregnant women whose foetus is proven to have a genetic abnormality choose to have an abortion, but reaching that decision is a painful, exhausting process for most of them. “The women’s doubt, pain and sorrow make abortion more moral – in the eyes of society as well as her own,” says Sølvi Marie Risøy, a researcher at the University of Bergen.
“I like to give someone a chance. So I have an au pair partly for idealistic reasons.” Norwegian families with au pairs do not agree that they may be exploiting poor women.
