Female production and modern housework is a central part of modernisation and the welfare state. Gro Hagemann is researching how historical and political changes have formed the role of the housewife through the 20th century.

The authorities want to get the victims of trafficking to talk. However, silence is a protection for many of the women, in their attempt to start a new life. Give them information and legal aid so they can make their own, qualified decisions is the advice from a group of Norwegian and Serbian researchers who have interviewed the victims of trafficking in Serbia.

When everything feels unstable, having control over your own body and your food intake becomes a way of taking charge. If you don’t eat then that’s at least one thing you’re in control over. Besides, you become slim; and slim means happy. Karen Klovning and Siri Hoftun have interviewed eight girls who have had anorexia.

To the support services self-injuring women often seem inscrutable and helpless. The women’s own insights into and comprehension of self-harm are not asked for. In Norway Anita Moe has interviewed a group of women and their experiences of self-injury. For this work she won the prize for outstanding contribution to women’s studies and gender research 2005 at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Kristin Skjørten has investigated how two Norwegian newspapers cover murder and other violence against women, in cases where the perpetrator has a close relationship to the woman. Some cases are widely reported and trigger debates on topics such as honour. Other cases received limited coverage under the headline, family tragedy.

In Norway sperm donation is legal, but egg donation is not – despite today’s technology and medical techniques that make it possible. What is it about motherhood that makes the donation of eggs a viable solution that is not used? Kristin Spilker’s doctoral project explores this and the issues that arise from it.

Anne Sæbø left Norway for the USA ten years ago. Now she is back as a guest researcher. Here she reflects over the similarities and differences, and how American ways gradually affect Norwegian traditions; Christmas decorations, for example.

In Manndalen, a village in the county of Troms in the north of Norway, Laestadianism is a strong influence in the community. How does this affect those in the community who do not belong to this religious movement? Why is home baptism still practised , while Christmas trees – which were previously rejected – are now on their way in to every living room? Lisa Vangen has conducted fieldwork and interviews in the village.

Oil and gas has become the mantra for the future in Norway, not only connected to the Snøhvit (literally, Snow White) project at Hammerfest, in the far north of Norway, but in the whole of the county of Finnmark. Anthropologist Britt Kramvig fears that as a consequence the other untapped resources of the region, like its many educated women, are being forgotten.