WUNRN
NORWAY - GENDER EQUALITY
Applause as Norwegian Government`s gender equality
action plan is presented in Norway. To the left: Hege Skjeie, to the right
Minster of Equality Inge Marta Thorkildsen
From next year
Oct 11, 2012 | Text & Photo: Björn Lindahl
When
“We often hear we’re living in
the country of gender equality. And the history of equality has many examples
of Norwegian innovation. The world’s first equality ombud, the world’s first
gender equal government, the partnership law, daddy leave and female quotas in
boardrooms,” said Hege Skjeie when she presented the report ‘Policy for Gender
Equality’.
“Yet in important social
institutions the distance between gender equality as a value to be highlighted
and gender equality in practice is still large.”
Gender segregated labour market
Three in four bosses are still
men. Out of ten sectors, from defence and the economic sector to culture and
education, only two fall marginally within the aim of having at least 40 percent
of each gender as leaders.
The imbalance between the sexes
manifests itself in two ways - partly in the development of female and male
jobs, partly in the fact that women are paid less than men for doing the same
job.
But today’s equality politics
must address more than gender issues. People are discriminated against for
other reasons, like ethnicity, sexual preference, age and disabilities. The
report refers to studies from the
The man is not always more powerful
Yet the report also shows that
men are not always more powerful than women: a white, Norwegian middle class
woman is more powerful in most situations than a male asylum seeker who has no
access to the labour market.
So which are the measures the
report recommends in order to increase equality?
- The report recommends the
establishment of a new directorate for equality. Today there are no checks
to see whether the equality targets are actually being met.
- The report also recommends a
tri-partite equality agreement between the government and the social
partners. The parties would negotiate equality goals and businesses
willing to sign the deal would get access to funding, similar to what is
being done through the agreement on an including working life.
One of the report’s most
innovative statements is that in order to reduce gender segregation in the
labour market, there must be measures in place to target people already at the
stage when they are choosing their education. That is why the report recommends
the introduction of a special equality grant. Those who choose to study for
non-traditional occupations should have one third of their student loan
subsidised. This would apply for boys and girls.
In
“We haven’t looked into whether subsidising student loans with 30 precent is enough to make students switch studies,” says Hege Skjeie. Subsidising one single student would cost 8,000 kroner (€1,080) a year for upper secondary education and nearly 17,000 kroner (€2,290) a year for higher education.
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Parental Leave Split Three-Ways
Parental
leave in Norway is to be divided into three parts, where the mother and father
get 14 weeks each after the birth while 18 weeks can be divided between them as
they please. This means the daddy quota increases with two weeks compared to
today’s system.
The
equality report criticises politicians for often going for costly measures
which don’t really do much to increase equality. Parental leave costs 16bn
Norwegian kroner (€2.16bn) every year.
Still,
the report’s most expensive recommendation is also about parental leave. Today
the man’s benefit is not based on his won wage, but on how much the woman
earns.
The
equality report suggests men and women get equal rights, irrespective of how
much they work and what with. This would cost nearly 2.8bn Norwegian kroner
(€377m) a year.
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NORWAY - GENDER EQUALITY POLICY AREAS
Gender equality policies has been more or less
successfully integrated into the following areas: families and relationships;
work, welfare and the economy; power and decision-making; education and
research; crime and violence; peace and development; culture, media and sports;
and health and reproductive rights. Other policy areas: transport and
communication; finance; agriculture and food; fisheries and coastal affairs;
petroleum and energy; and the environment are still at an earlier phase.
A number of steps have been taken to ensure men and women equal access to
higher education, equal opportunities for participation in the labour force and
in choice of occupation. Today, women and men have more or less equal levels of
education, and women’s participation in working life has increased dramatically
since the 1960s. However, work towards achieving equal access to resources is
still clearly unfinished. Women’s income still stands at approximately 60 per
cent of men’s. This is largely due to the gender segregated labour market in
Norway - most women work in the public sector and most men in the private
sector. Pregnant women are discriminated against in workplaces, and equal pay
is still an unachieved goal. This inequality in what women and men earn is also
closely related to the low level of entrepreneurship among women compared to
men and the fact that men hold the majority of key political, economic and
other decision-making positions.
A number of steps have also been taken by successive Norwegian governments
towards supporting two-career families. But the efforts involved in
facilitating a reconciliation of work and family life are hindered by what is
referred to as the ‘caring deficit’ - the gap between the need for care and the
availability of its supply. Care arrangements for children and other dependents
are relatively good, but not good enough. In addition, the division of
responsibilities within households between men and women is unequal - women
still do most of the housework. They also take most of the available parental
leave and it is they who utilize the cash benefit scheme.
The
diversity of post-modern lifestyles also raises new gender issues, such as
childhood dominated by female parenting after separations, or the problems men
living in same sex partnerships face in establishing families and having
children.
On the question of ageing, women generally live longer than men. The fertility
rate in Norway is relatively high compared to other western countries.
Many illnesses are gendered, due, not only to biological differences between
women and men, but also to differing lifestyles and the socio-economic
conditions in which men and women live. In the area of reproductive health,
Norway was quick to recognise women’s right to make decisions about their
bodies, including freedom of choice in terms of abortion. There is however more
work to be done in other health areas. Many illnesses that women are prone to
are not prioritised, and treatments for these illnesses are comparatively
under-resourced.
Gender-based violence has gained recognition in Norwegian society as a social
problem, demanding the attention and focus of the authorities. However,
domestic violence, rape, prostitution and human trafficking continue to be
major barriers to gender equality. Perpetrators of gender-based violence are
mostly men and those subject to these forms of violence are largely women.
Norway has developed a number of measures for the prevention of these forms of
violence, for the protection of the victims as well as for responding to the
perpetrators. There are shelters for battered women, and men who are violent
have access to treatment and counselling.
Norway’s national gender issues are more or less the same as those found
internationally. Norway aims to mainstream gender in Norwegian foreign policy,
in the areas of peace and reconciliation and development cooperation.
Religion, culture and sports are all areas which present a number of ongoing
challenges to gender equality. Population, including issues around immigration
and the situation of refugees and asylum seekers, is also an area with a number
of challenges to gender equality.