Gender agenda

13 April 2010

More knowledge and greater investment into women and gender research is the first step towards a more equal Europe, urges KVINFO Director Elisabeth Møller Jensen

Working with gender and equality is a paradoxical business. On the one hand, we have hard facts proving that gender equality is vital to the developmental potential of every community – politically, culturally and socially – whether in rich or poor parts of the world. 40 years of research has demonstrated that to continue passing on fossilised gender roles to new generations holds back development and social progress. We also know that equality between men and women is possibly the most effective generator of change the world has yet seen. Equality not only influences the individual man and woman, the lives and opportunities of girls and boys, it also makes and shapes the welfare states that power the European dream of steadily developing democracy. It ought to be a simple matter – for European governments, at least – to make political reforms to strengthen equal opportunities. On the other hand – the other side of the paradox – equality is one of the most controversial political areas of them all.

An experience that made a deep impression in my long professional life was when I heard the then Swedish Minister for Social Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister Bengt Westerberg recalling how he became a feminist, by reading the report entitled 'Democracy and Power in Sweden' (Maktutredningen 1990), which included a chapter on gender and democracy. He had not expected this to be absorbing weekend reading, but it alerted him to the fact that gender equality is a perfectly normal area of political concern based on research and evidence. His outlook changed: on equality, women's situations and the need for action – politically, too. The combination of historian Yvonne Hirdman's contribution to the Swedish report and Bengt Westerberg's political drive to bring about change had crucial significance for Sweden's ongoing development of the political equality project – for Sweden to continue to lead.

Denmark, however, which used to occupy the leading position, has been unable to stay there. Denmark could be called a paradise for paradox; in terms of numbers of women in work, we top the European list, but we trail equally impressively at the bottom for numbers of women in leadership roles. Living in a highly developed welfare state, the choice for Danish women is no longer between family and work – but perhaps it is still between family and career? The Danish position – at the top and at the bottom of the European equality statistics table – ought to be a robust hint to the Danish government, offering an opportunity for the next major reform in the Danish welfare project, as pointed out by Gösta Esping-Andersen, Professor of Sociology at Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, in the book 'Why We Need a New Welfare State', 2003.

At present, the big European step changes in equality are being taken in some of the Nordic countries and in southern Europe. Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland are developing legislation on fathers' paternity leave rights, and Norway is working on quota systems for women's representation in leadership roles; elsewhere Spain is implementing utterly radical legislation on violence against women. The European gender equality project is dependent on hard facts gleaned from the research tradition, combined with political will to reform. The countries currently forging ahead have recognised that the two go hand-in-hand. I am in no doubt whatsoever that more knowledge and far greater investment in research into women and gender is the first step along the necessary path towards a more equal Europe. Large parts of Europe are still locked in a vicious equality circle. Whence comes the courage to do more of what we know could break that paradox?