Nordic women's studies and gender research started up in the 1950s and 1960s as a radical sex role and family research. The late professor Harriet Holter, who died just two moths ago at the age of 76, was a leading figure in this research. What distinguished this Scandinavian research from the anglo- saxian functionalist approach, as seen first and foremost in the contemporary work of Talcot Parsons, was a critical stand toward gender roles and the societal structures on which they were based. While Parsons saw the sex role system as a functional and to a large extent natural way of sharing work tasks in a society, the Scandinavian researchers dissociated themselves from this more or less explicit biological reductionism, and regarded the sex system as a socially constructed system of expectations directed towards men and women, which limited their life possibilities. Sex roles were learned and thus changeable (Leira 1992).
What was the reason for this difference between North-American and Scandinavian approaches? I will point to two important factors, one intra- and one extra-scientific. The intra-scientific factor was a parallel development of a qualitative and critical empirical sociology in Norway. This brand of sociology, later called ‘the problem-oriented empiricism’ was an important stepping stone both for the sex-role research and the later development of women’s studies (Leira 1992). The extra-scientific factor has to do with the general traits of the Nordic culture and society. In Nordic culture and politcal history, equality and community spirit are central values. This has been expressed in strong and varied popular movements, a close relationship between state and society, the strong position of social democracy, and the building of the welfare state. These special Nordic features have furnished official and political legitimacy for the demand for gender equality. Struggles for equal rights and better social life conditions for women, as well as a political and philosophical theoretical discussion of the status of women, have taken place in the Nordic societies since the late18th century.
The movements for women’s rights especially around the turn of the century and the radical sex-role research of the 1950s and 1960s grasped at some of the the issues later raised internationally through the new women’s movement and the new type of women’s research which started up about 1970. In a Nordic context one can see here once again see the indirect influence of the welfare state. As the Norwegian feminist economist Kari Skrede has indicated, the welfare state of the post war period had one policy for the mothers and another for the daughters. While the mother’s welfare was cared for through a family-, income- and housing policy solidly based on the Parsonian family ideal, the daughters benefited from an educational policy which aimed at equalizing access to higher education, regardless of place of residence, social class and gender (Skrede 1996). This policy brought new categories of students to the university in the 1960s and 1970s- and many of these were young girls who had been brought up believing that gender did not count in the field of knowledge and education. What they discovered was, of course, that the so-called gender-neutrality of science and research and the academic culture was an illusion. It was all for, by and about men, disguised as the universal human subject. The American feminist Adrienne Rich has very aptly described the experience of this generation of young female university students: ‘When somebody with authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing’ (Rich, in Rosaldo 1989).
The women’s research from the 1970s differed from the early sex role research by stressing the suppression of women by male domination and power. The sex roles were not just seen as a gender dividing system, hurting both men and women, but as a patriarcal power hiearchy on the basis of a gender division. As part of the radical student movement and the feminist political movement of the same periode, power and domination were conceptualized through mainly marxist theory. The feminsts also took part in the battle against the dominating positivist paradigm of science, pointing out the the power interests and the power effects inherent in all knowledge and research. The efforts were directed towards the academic organization and the academic disciplines them selves. The invisibility of women in research reports, and gender biased concepts, theories and instruments came under attack. Thus, feminist research of this period was characterized both by a political activism and academic subject- critique.
Theoretically there was both a line of structuralism - with a focus on the large societal structures, economy, ideology and politics, which supressed women, and a line of agency-theories - aimed at making women’s life and experiences in every day life visible. The first described women as victims of a patriarchal society, the second highlighted the culture and values women. I think it is true to say that the latter became the dominant conceptual frame as time went by, and also that the structuralist approach was replaced by more specific analysises of institutions . In the first decade concepts like ‘Women’s culture’ and ‘women’s rationality of care’ were central. Phenomenological and qualitative methods were grasped and developed as suitable research instruments to make women’s lives visible and recognized, and thus give women self-respect and self-consciouness to act politically. They also to supplemented the missing part of the male dominated research. Interdiciplinary approaches were acknowleded as necessary to describe the life-world and life-situation of women, where lines between private and public, care and work, economy and sexuality, emotions and rationality frequently are blurred.
This perspective ‘from below’, accounts of everyday life and experience has prevailed. It has given Norwegian women’s research a stamp of interdisciplinary and empirical orientation, perhaps at the cost of theoretical refinement. The goal of making women’s lives visible has resulted in a vast amount of social research in areas like women, education and work, gender relations in family life, research on the care-work done by women, gender socialization of girls and boys at home and in school, gender and technology, women and politics, research on prostitution, sexualized violence and women’s health. Part of the results of the first decade of women’s social research was documented in a 17-volume big book-series published by the Scandinavian University Press within only a 5 years-span (1982-87). The name of the series, edited by the political scientist Prof. Helga Hernes, was ‘The Life Conditions and Life Courses of Women’. In the humanities, areas like women’s contributions to, representations in, and reception of art, litterature, philosophy and religion were highlighted. In women’s history, publications focussing on family, work and child bearing, and on modernization and industrialization have marked the field of research. A special Norwegian branch in women’s legal studies, was initiated by the late professor of law, Tove Stang Dahl as early as 1974. The research here covers equal rights legislation, legal rights for house wives, birth law , criminal law, women and international human rights and women and law in third world countries. This research has shed light over the gender discriminating consequences of gender neutral laws.Co-operation among the five Nordic countries
- The research project Women in politics, which in 1983 published a comparative report about women's position and role in the political systems of the Nordic countries. The report has later been translated into English: Unfinished Democracy: Women in Nordic Politics.
- The Nordic Bryt-project financed by the Nordic council of ministers from 1985-89, aiming at breaking down the gender segregation in the labour market
- The Nordic women's literary history which covers a timespan of 1000 years, covering women's litterature from the Islandic sagaes to the contemporary litterature of Sami women and women from Greenlan. The project is now being published in five volumes and contains 6000 pages.
- The women's world history which were published in 1992-93.
(Rosenbeck 19xx)
It is of course impossible to give a comprehensive picture of all the different areas within the time limits of this lecture, but I should mention that a special feature of Nordic women's research, which often creates a stir abroad, is its breadth. Nordic researchers in women's studies have not confined themselves to cultural and social research in a narrow sense, but have also applied women's perspectives to peace research and human rights, primary industries and economy, ecology and administration of natural resources (for example, women's participation in fisheries, forestry and agriculture) and to areas such as biotechnology, conceptions of nature, and the world of sports.
Still, the anchorage in the Nordic reality and cultural tradition of the welfare state and equality values has resulted in Nordic women's research right from the start being more strongly oriented towards the concept of equality than has been the case with women's research on the continent. This has meant that areas such as education, work, politics, social reproduction, and organization of daily life have been the central areas of research, whereas, for instance, research on body, identity, socialization and sexuality has been weaker, and has appeared seriously on the agenda only in the last few years. As Karin Widerberg, a professor of sociology wrote in 1986: In the Nordic women's research the womens'emerge as strangely gender-less. They work and work - as if we women lived by and for the work alone’ (Widerberg 1986).
I believe this orientation towards work and politics also has to do with the close connections between the academic project of women's research and the political agenda of gender equality of the wellfare state - the so-called ‘Nordic state feminism’. This pairing has had its advantages and its pitfalls for women's studies. The advantages have been that most granting agencies for feminist research has been public institutions, for instance the National research council and the state departments. An important economic basis for the growth of Norwegian women's research has been personal contacts and informal networks between feminist researchers and ‘femocrats’ or ‘state feminists’ - the nicknames for feminist politicians and bureaucrats. Even though women's studies today are relative well anchored at the universities - thanks to a quite pragmatic strategy of ‘institutionalisation’ from the very start - this result had not been accomplished without strong allies both in the parliament and the National research council. Long before women’s studies were accepted at the universities, they made their nest at the Norwegian research council with small, but continious research programs, and even its own and relatively autonomous secretariat for women's studies inside the walls of the research council itself. This has been decisive for the initial phase, and it has made it possible to educate a generation of feminst researchers many of whom to day have managed to get tenured positions at the universities or at the research institutes outside the University.
To day we have research centres for feminist research at all four universities in Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø, and around 50 professors belonging to all kinds of different departments, have women's studies as part of their academic competence. A rough estimate should say that we have around 400 researchers in the fields of women's- and genderstudies. One weak point is the development of courses in women's studies for undergraduate and graduate students. The explanation is probably that this has been an area where the state feminists could only push the mattter within limited degrees. The curriculum and the canon of university subjects are still governed mainly by male professors who do not always see the significance of women and gender studies, even after 20 years of intense research in the field. These matters - getting feminist and gender studies into the curriculum of the universities, and more women into tenured research positions - have high priority among feminist researchers to day.
The possible pitfall of this alliance between women researchers and femocrats has been a comparatively positive attitude to the state and to public intervention, which is reflected in the deep-seated trust in state planning and reformist policy making (Bergman 1993). We are dependent on the existence of ‘a woman friendly state’ as Helga Hernes has coined the word, for supplying us not only with parental leaves, kindergardens, homes for the sick and elderly, financial support of single mothers, laws and regulations against gender discrimination etc. , but also for research money. As a result much of women's studies has been of an applied nature and policy oriented. We sometimes meet our-selves in the door when, for instance some of the femocrats easily equate feminist research and day-to-day gender equality politics. Last year, for instance, the minister of equality suggested merging the Research councils’ secretariat for women's studies with the state council for gender equality politics - expecting feminist research to be a docile instrument for state politics. A long the way, we have learned some lessons about the fact that some of the good old academic values of freedom and autonomy of research, are also important for critical feminist research.
Thus far feminist research in Norway has reached a relatively strong position. And women in the Nordic countries to day participate in education, employment and politics to a fairly equal degree. So do we actually need more women's research - or has the job been completed? The Nordic countries are frequently considered ideal models of the succesful application of policies of social and gender equality. In an international comparison and from an economic standpoint, Nordic women are today relatively independent. The presence of women in the political arena has risen steadily in all the Nordic countries to the point where today it is the highest in the world (appr. 40%). (Bergman 1993). All this has happened within a timespan of 30 years. In my opinion it would be very silly to regard these changes as only superficial make-up on unchanged patriarchical societal structures. On the other hand, it would be equally silly to believe that a total victory has been won. Although the Nordic wellfare state has facilitated the integration of women into paid work, it is simultaneously based upon many women's undervalued, low paid or unpaid work. The gender segreation of the labour market as well as in higher education is very sharp, and half of the Norwegian women work part time. Powerfull corporate structures in society are still male dominated. Thus, a closer analysis of the Nordic countries reveals patterns of under representation, discimination and sexism similar to those found elsewhere (Bergman 1993).
Still, what might be the most interesting field for feminist research in the Nordic countries to day is to study the effects of change in gender relations. Even though paradise has not yet been reached, we are spearheading the process of change towards more gender equality. These changes have had significant consequences for the organization of gender relations in different areas and for the way relationships between men and women have developed in the Nordic countries. It has had an impact on life patterns, growing up, family life and work life - for the better and for the worse. The gaps between formal rights and women's everyday life have sharpened our consciousness about contradictions in the proces of equality. The change in gender relations which we witness today has a strong impact on principles of social organization, cultural attitudes and creation of gender identity in the individual. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are standing face to face with one of the most important social and cultural changes in our time. This applies not only to the Nordic countries, but also to the rest of the world. The special Nordic prerequisites for and understanding of equality, combined with the fact that we are confronted with a phenomenon of a more world wide nature, should mean that Nordic experiences in this field particularly ought to have a high degree of relevance for the ongoing changes worldwide.
The feminst researchers of the 1990s have become more aware of this. At the present moment questions about how gender is changing before our eyes get more attention than questions about how gendered structures are reproduced. This is also mirrored in the fact that the latest research program in the national research council has the heading ‘Gender in change: institutions, norms, identities’. Question asked are:
- How do actual changes which affect gender relations in the Nordic countries (in the arenas of family, school, work, legal systems, politics) tie in with changes in conceptions about gender, and how gender is expressed? What happens with divisions between public and privat, work and family, individual rights and collective norms when the gender relations are put into motion?
- How are our opinions gradually changing regarding what is considered masculine/feminine/neuter gender? What do such changes mean for self-understanding and individuality among individuals and groups? What happens with the way we conceive gender when the loosening of the tie between sexuality and reproduction threathens the dominant heterosexual paradigm? What happens with the personal identity when the meanings of gender becomes more fluid?
- To what extent is the equal status which has been achieved by women vulnerable to backlash - and to what extent might it constitute a culturally irreversible proces? What sort of connections (or lack of connections) exist between cultural change of gender, changes in the gendered power structure, and the change of patterns of gender identity?
Parallel to questions like these, theories of gender and strategies for feminist research have changed. The name women's research is giving away more and more to the concept of gender research. Mens' studies has emerged as part of gender studies. More than searching for the common traits of women's lives and experiences, focus is now on how gendered meanings are organizing principles of institutions and discourses. The concepts from the 1970s and 1980s about women's culture and a women-specific rationality of care, have been deeply questioned by poststructuralist thinking about essentializing the very gender stereotypes we wanted to call into battle. We can’t change the system and still expect women to be women and men to be men in the way they always have been. This perspective has given attention to differences within each gender group and contradictions within each individual. There has been a development from seing women first as victims, then as angels on earth, and now as individuals. Attention is given to the way gender interact with other social and cultural categories like class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion and generation - and also to how the process of equality creates new differences among women. One has acknowledged how women themselves can also contribute to the reproduction of a suppressing gender system for instance by defending privileges connected to this system.
The questions have become more complex, but also more challenging. A very central one is what actually defines feminist research and feminist political action in the case of blurring gender divisions. We wanted to get rid of the gender system - but did we want gender to go with it? But what is gender, apart from the gender system? The phase we are now in are charcterized by a greater degree of theoretical self-reflection - but so far that has not prevented us from continuing our empirical research into the lives of women and men and into the institutions that frame their lives.
References
Bergman, Solveig. 1993. ‘Nordic cooperation in women's studies’ In Solveig Bergman (ed): Women's studies and Research on Women in the Nordic Countries’. Turku.
Leira, Arnlaug. 1992. ‘Hankjønn, hunkjønn, intetkjønn -? Forståelser av kjønn i norsk kvinnesosiologi’. In: Arnhild Taksdal og Karin Widerberg (red): Forståelser av kjønn i samfunnsviteskapenes fag og kvinneforskning. Oslo: ad Notam, Gyldendal.
Rosaldo, Renato.1989. Culture and Truth. Boston: Beacon Press
Rosenbeck, Bente. 199x. ‘Nordic women's and gender research’. In: Nordic feminist thought. In press.
Skrede, Kari. 1996. ‘Levekår i tre kvinnegenerasjoner’. In: Kjønn, generasjon, identitet. Arbeidsnotat 8/96, Senter for kvinneforskning, Universitetet i Oslo.
Widerberg, Karin. 1986. ‘Finnes det en nordisk modell i kvinneforskningen? Om velferdsstatens krise som kvinneforskningens legitimering’. In: Den samfunnsvitenskapelige kvinneforskningen mot år 2000: Utfordringer og visjoner. Arbeidsnotat 5/86. Oslo: NAVF.