Anne Maria Holli
Gender equality in the Nordic countries
The Nordic countries consist of five small and peaceful countries in the remote North-Western part
of Europe, with a total population just under 25 million people. Usually, these kinds of features do
not bring any country international fame or a place in history. I also very much doubt that there
would be so much attention paid to the Nordic countries in social and political science (or the world
press either) around the world if it weren't for two characteristics. The first one is the high status of
women and the high level of gender equality: in international statistics and comparisons, the Nordic
countries are consistently acknowledged as the most egalitarian in the world. The second
characteristic relates to the development of a particular-type Nordic, Social Democratic, welfare
state. This is often also called by another name: the 'women-friendly' welfare state.
These two Nordic specialties - a high-level of gender equality and the form of the welfare state - are
not unrelated facts. Rather, they can be seen as interacting mechanisms, partly causes and
consequences to each other. On the one hand, women's relatively high status has given them access
to political arenas and opportunities to influence policy-making and insert their concerns in it. On
the other hand, the 'women-friendly' social policies which were adopted from the 1960s and 1970s
onwards in these countries have also helped women participate in paid work in the labour market.
For example, there is cheap and accessible public day care for children, and this has made the dual
breadwinner model possible in the first place. There are in place also various types of parental
leaves with financial compensation for parents to have time off work without risk of losing their
jobs, for example, when a child is born to the family or when the child is small, under 3 years old or
has not yet reached the school-age. These ordinances apply to both the genders, mothers and fathers
alike.
It is also these two features - high level of gender equality and the form of the welfare state - that
give the Nordic countries their special flavour in the minds of scholars of comparative politics in
particular. Since the 1970s, the Nordic countries have become the place where feminists, social
scientists and policy-makers worldwide look for explanations, inspiration and ideals for how to
build a gender-equal society.
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In this lecture, I will give you an general introduction to the Nordic gender equality, its successes
and continuing problems. My aim is rather to give you a taste of the topic, to whet your academic
appetites, than to aim at a comprehensive picture which would not possible in the time available. In
my talk, I will point out some areas which have been crucial to the achievement of the high level of
Nordic gender equality, and discuss them also in light of a recent, more comprehensive analysis on
the economic and cultural change in the world. In conclusion, I will point out some continuing
problems that make apparent that there are shortcomings to both theory and practice of gender
equality in the Nordic countries.
Let us start with international statistics and the story it tells of the Nordic countries.
The UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) publishes annually special statistics that are
intended to measure women's relative power contra men's. This statistics is called GEM (Gender
Empowerment Measure). The Nordic countries invariably top these statistics, as you can see from
this table displaying the five top ranking countries in GEM statistics:
HDI
Rank
Country
Gender empowerment measure (GEM)
value
1
14
6
2
13
Norway
Denmark
Sweden
Iceland
Finland
0.928
0.860
0.852
0.834
0.833
Source: UNDP Human Development Report 2005.
It is to be noted that in the GEM-indicator, the value 1 would represent the situation where women
and men have equal power in society. We can observe that although the Nordic countries do
extremely well in this international comparison, there is still room for improvement: Norway, which
tops highest, still has about 0.1 measure - a tenth of the mileage - left to go before reaching the
objective of women's and men's equal power. For the other Nordic countries, the goal of equal
power for both genders is still farther away.
What, then, are the explanations to the Nordic countries doing so well both in this international
comparison and so many others?
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Firstly, it must be told that there are features in the Nordic gender equality that tend to give a special
boost to the Nordic countries in international comparisons of various kinds, since these same factors
tend also to be the crucial themes that are targeted in statistical yardsticks for gender equality.
Women's high education level, women's high labour market participation and women's high
political representation are three of the most significant indicators utilised to measure gender
equality. In all of the Nordic countries, women are very well educated, their labour market
participation is very high and especially their political participation and representation are the
highest in the world. In all of the five Nordic countries, the female population has in fact a higher
education level than the male one. Women also comprise the majority of students enrolled at both
upper secondary level education and tertiary level education in all of the countries. Women's labour
market activity (number of people in the labour force between 16-64 years) varies between 84.0%
in Iceland to 72.1% in Finland.
It is however in politics where Nordic women have achieved the most remarkable results. Today the
world average of women MPs worldwide (lower houses) is 16%. In the Nordic countries the
proportion of women MPs varies between 45% and 30%, with Sweden at the top and Iceland at the
low end of the ladder.
Table: Women MPs in the Nordic countries 2005 - international ranking and
proportion of women MPs in parliaments (lower houses)
2. Sweden 45.3%
3. Norway 38.2%
4. Finland 37.5%
5. Denmark 36.9%
16. Iceland 30.2%
Source: International Parliamentary Union website: http://www.ipu.org - accessed 26.8.2005.
By contrast to the political arena, the number of women in other types of societal élites, such the
leadership of business, trade unions and academia, tends to be much lower, and does not in fact very
much differ from the rest of the world. It is sometimes even worse, for example, when it comes to
the proportion of women in business élites.
There are many explanations to Nordic women's success in the political and democratic arena. It
has been ascribed to favourable proportional electoral systems, the existence of relatively strong
and independent women's party organisations, or the long tradition of cultural acceptance towards
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women as political actors in these countries. We must not forget either that education level and
status of employment and material well-being also strongly affect both voting rate and political
participation in general, as we know from the existing body of studies on political behaviour.
A closer study reveals that the high representation of women is often achieved by slightly different
mechanisms in the different Nordic countries. Firstly, there has been a slightly different rhythm to
the increases in women’s political representation in the five Nordic countries. Finnish women won
enfranchisement and political eligibility as first in Europe as early as 1906, whereas in the other
Nordic countries women's political rights were realised between 1907-1920. For sixty years,
Finland was the world leader in the proportion of women MPs. The other Nordic countries achieved
the same levels of women’s representation in parliament only in the late 1960s and especially
1970s, with Iceland lagging somewhat behind the others till today. From 1970s onwards, pressure
from the rising second-wave feminism forced in Norway and Sweden the big political parties
(especially those of the left-wing), to start an internal change where they adopted gender equality
objectives and nominated more women as their candidates. These measures increased the number of
women representatives rapidly in Swedish and Norwegian politics.
The latest notable shift in the proportion of women in politics occurred in the 1990s especially. In
Norway and Sweden (which utilise the closed system PR electoral system), the increase in women's
political representation was quite much an effect of the 'zipper system' taken into usage - the big
parties started to compose their candidate lists like zippers, having both women and men in equal
numbers and in equally eligible positions on their electoral lists. This system guarantees a kind of
'automatic' numerical gender balance for the party's elected representatives.
By contrast, in Finland, which utilises the open list form of proportional electoral system, women's
high political representation has come via a different mechanism - most notably the majority of
women voting for female candidates in a context where the political parties have slowly and quite
reluctantly increased their pool of female candidates (41% maximum figure ever). In Finland
political parties have been much less committed to gender equality that in Sweden, for example,
where almost all the major parties declared themselves 'feminist' parties from the 1990s onwards.
Also Finnish male voters have been quite reluctant to cast their vote for a female candidate,
although this pattern has changed considerably during the last thirty years: in the beginning of the
1970s, only one man in ten voted for a female candidate; in the beginning of the 1990s, every fourth
man voted for a woman candidate.
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One of the most prominent features of the Nordic countries has been their high general, popular,
support for gender equality and women's rights: the whole populations seem to approve of the goal
of gender equality and modern gender roles in which everyone, regardless of gender, can decide to
have both a career and a fulfilling family life. One of the most interesting scholarship concerning
this was published just a few years ago by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris in their book Rising
Tide. Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World (2003). Inglehart and Norris link the
change in gender roles and gender equality with the more comprehensive cultural shifts that occur
with societal modernisation and increase of economic affluence.
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At the outset of their study, Inglehart and Norris looked into support for gender equality in 61
countries around the world. The Nordic countries, once again, came up very high in the comparison:
in Finland, Sweden and Norway, along with other affluent societies, cultural support for gender
equality was very high, over 80% were in favour of egalitarian gender roles.
Inglehart and Norris continued their study by making a quantitative comparative analysis of 71
countries around the world. In conclusion, Inglehart and Norris claim that economic development
and societal modernization bring systematic, predictable changes in gender roles. As societies grow
in affluence and move towards postmaterialist values, the more support there exists for gender
equality, and the more changes there occur in gender roles in practice .
The researchers envision modernisation occurring in two phases: The first phase is the shift from an
agrarian towards industrial economy: along with changes in the economy, it brings women into the
workforce, and starts a series of changes towards more gender equality in the society. The typical
characteristics to changing gender roles include: reduced fertility rates; a decline of traditional
family patterns; women’s literacy and greater educational opportunities; and women’s
enfranchisement and participation in representative government but with women still having far less
power than men.
According to these scholars, the second shift is the shift from industrial to post-industrial societies;
at a point of sufficient affluence, modernisation occurs via a shift from material to postmaterial
values; instead of the stress being on the acquisition of material goods and material well-being, the
new slogans are the quality of life, self-expression values and autonomy. What happens is a
secularisation and liberalisation of cultural values. According to Inglehart and Norris, the rise of
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gender equality – both as a cultural value and a social praxis – is closely linked with this phase of
development towards a postmaterialist society. Typical features to this shift towards postmaterialist
values are: individuation, especially that of women; a more equal division of labour between the
genders in all areas of life; a growing equality of sex roles, and a high participation of women in
politics.
I cannot refrain from remarking on one thing: when presenting these new results Ronald Inglehart
engages also in some serious self-criticism. He points out that he had earlier underestimated the
significance of gender equality in his very influential and well-known studies on cultural change in
the Western world. The gender factor, he now claims, perhaps composes the single most central
component of value change in post-industrial societies. Although modernisation changes the lives
of men, the authors point out, it changes the lives of women much more profoundly.
Inglehart and Norris’s study has also consequences as to how we can view the significance of
Nordic high-level gender equality in the larger context. For those researchers the Nordic countries
appear as prime examples of postmaterialist societies: they are prosperous, secularised, displaying
high levels of individuation, including that of women, a high level of gender equality and women’s
high-level participation in all areas of public life.
Looking at the social reality in the Nordic countries however reveals some of the shortcomings of
this model and points out the serious remaining gender inequalities even there. Instead of idealised
model societies of egalitarianism, we get a much more paradoxical picture of persistent patriarchal
and sexist attitudes and practices that especially pertain to the private sphere, but also partly the
public sphere. Moreover, as Inglehart and Norris also observe in their analysis, the rising tide of
gender equality is not an automatic process or a purely one-way process, but it is also profoundly
affected by cultural, economic and political changes that can produce setbacks in the development
towards a better gender equality. It is also this kind of a backlash that we have partly been
experiencing in the Nordic countries especially since the 1990s as economic recession, globalising
economies and problems in funding the social policy system pose new challenges to them.
Many serious problems remain when it comes to gender equality in the Nordic countries. In the
Nordic countries the gender segregation of the labour market is one of the deepest in the world (as
shown by some OECD studies for example) and does not show any signs of amelioration. Partly
this is due to exactly to the post-industrial stage of these societies (that is, the rise of the services
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sector), along with the evolvement of the 'women-friendly' welfare state in the Nordic countries.
Although women have gained a lot from the welfare state, it also has deepened the gender
segregation of the labour market: women are typically employed by the public sphere, as providers
of welfare services, for example, as nurses, teachers and kindergarten teachers, whereas men are
mostly employed by the private business. It has been pointed out that women are much more
dependent than men from the Nordic welfare state, in their roles as employees, citizens and
customers of social services. Recent reconfiguration and stream-lining of the Nordic welfare states
have thus posed direct threats to Nordic women in many ways.
Women still get a lower salary in all the Nordic countries – about 80-85% of men’s salaries. Even
when we take into account the structural differences in women’s and men’s labour market
affiliation, the effect of gender discrimination in women's wages is calculated to be between 6-14
percent. Women's chances of advancement to higher positions in working life are weaker than
men's. Moreover, the globalising economies have structurally changed women's position in the
labour market and made it weaker. For example, in Finland, there has been during the 1990s a
marked shift from women's full-time work to part-time work and especially to untypical, temporary
jobs with much weaker work security and social benefits.
The gender injustice in the private sphere is even more marked: women still do the most of the
household tasks - about 2/3 of them, although the Nordic men's involvement especially in childcare
has risen considerably during the last 40 years (cf. South Europe - women do about 80% of the
household chores). In short, women have a double burden: they both work outside the home and do
most of the informal and unpaid reproductive work at home.
Also, violence against women is widespread. A Swedish survey revealed that almost every other
woman (46%) over 15 had experienced male violence (Lundgren et al.). A Finnish survey showed
that 40% women have experienced violence or threats of violence by men during their life; every
fifth woman had been beaten or threatened with violence by their present partner (Piispa). These
figures for violence against women are very high, even internationally; and they tell us of a deep
disjunction between public attitudes of gender equality and private - sexist - behaviour.
In conclusion: by many measures the Nordic countries often appear as ‘a paradise for women’ as it
was called in a Nordic book ten years ago. Or at least, the Nordic countries appear as the best place
to be born in if you happen to be a woman. However, it must be emphasised that this is just a
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relative and conditional truth. Despite many positive developments, there is a multitude of gender
inequality problems that the Nordic countries share with the rest of the world, regardless of
economic prosperity or cultural values. It is also here that international co-operation towards
increasing women's rights, for example, via international treaties and agreements (the UN Beijing
Platform for Action from 1995 being one of the most important among them) play an important
role. They give also the Nordic countries new goals and objectives to strive for and they remind
them of not relaxing into inaction when there is still so much left to do in securing the promotion of
gender equality and women's rights.
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