The presumed vulnerability of women seeking an abortion limits the Norwegian debate on abortion – in both directions.

The health services, police and judicial system in Russia tend not to understand that women need protection against violence within the home. But Russian crisis centres have become quite adept at manoeuvring within the system to help women who are victims of domestic violence, says political scientist Kirsti Stuvøy.

All the fuss about recruitment destroys young women’s interest in natural science, according to educational researcher Guðrún Jónsdóttir.

Our traditional view of manliness contributes to create a framework in which men can also be victims of sexual abuse, according to Torbjørn Herlof Andersen. The researcher has studied men who have been sexually abused and he shows how they cope with their painful experiences.

Post-apartheid South Africa: A white professor is accused of sexually harassing a non-white student and loses his job. His daughter is gang raped by a group of black men. Should the novel Disgrace be interpreted as J. M. Coetzee’s protest again the new South Africa, or is the Nobel Laureate saying something else about violence, desire and empathy?

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.