The European Commission has granted NIKK and 14 other partners in Europe funding for a 4-year research project on gender and
citizenship in a multicultural Europe. While several social movements have contributed to social change in Europe during the
last four decades, the goal of FEMCIT is to investigate the role of women’s movements in these transformative processes.
Solveig Bergman at NIKK is the leader for Work Package 2 on social citizenship, examining the impact of civil society based actions and claims on childcare and parental leave policies. Other researchers in the work package are Celia Valiente, Hana Haskova, Minna Rantalaiho and Trine Rogg Korsvik.
Research objectives in Work Package 2:
- Examine the impact of civil society based actions and claims on childcare and parental leave policies
- Explore how the broad variety of women’s demands in relation to caring and parental issues has been reflected in and taken up by the women’s movements and other NGO’s
- Examine and assess the economic, socio-political and cultural opportunity structures that facilitate and hamper activism and claim-making in childcare and parental leave issues
- Outline future paths for gender-based activism and policy-making in childcare and parental leave policy. In this context both majority and minority women’s possibilities to achieve political voice and to influence mainstream policy-making will be explored
- Assess and compare best practice in childcare and parental leave policies in various parts of Europe and to identify ways of developing women’s full social citizenship in a multicultural Europe
- Analyze whether there are signs if patterns of convergence in childcare and family policies in Europe and to examine the role of the EU in this matter
Main Scientific Work Packages in FEMCIT:
- WP1 – Political citizenship: Towards full political citizenship: making gender parity representation work
- WP2 – Social citizenship: The impact of gender-based organising and claim making on child care and parental-leave policies
- WP3 – Economic citizenship: Gendered transformations of the work-life interface
- WP4 – Ethnic and religious citizenship: Intersections between feminism, ethnic identity and religion
- WP5 – Sexual and bodily citizenship: Citizenship and feminist body politics
- WP6 – Intimate citizenship: Women’s movements, cultural diversity, personal lives and policy
- WP7 – Integrative analysis: A new architecture of gender-fair citizenship in a multicultural Europe
FEMCIT is funded by the European Commission’s 6th framework programme. FEMCIT constitutes 15 partners from 10 European countries.
