Core feminist texts made available

Event

"Women strike back" in Iceland

Five years have passed since the last time Icelandic women protested against the gender pay gap by marching out of their workplaces after less than two thirds of the workday. This year it is time again. "Women Strike Back" on 25 October in Reykjavik. Read more

Interview

NordForsk Director sees opportunities for gender research

“Nordic gender research is successful and ought to be an area where co-operation creates added Nordic value.” This is an opinion expressed by Gunnel Gustafsson, new Director of NordForsk. Read more

News

Centre for Gender Equality Information in Finland opens today

It becomes easier to obtain information on gender equality and gender research in Finland. The new centre and website, Minna, opens today. Read more

A holistic approach to Icelandic gender relations

Historic step was taken on Friday 9 October 2009 when Gyða Margrét Pétursdóttir was the first person to defend her PhD in Gender Studies at the University of Iceland. Read more

News

Director appointed for European Institute for Gender Equality

In 2005, the EU Commission decided to set up an institute for gender equality. Almost four years later, Virginija Langbakk has been appointed Director for the European Institute for Gender Equality, which is to be established in Vilnius, Lithuania. Read more

Gender and equality occupy a central position in the EU Research Framework Programme

Recently, a total of 22 new areas of action were announced in the 7th EU framework programme for research and technological development. The integration of a gender and sexuality perspective is considered important within all the areas of research in the programme. Furthermore, one objective is to increase the share of female researchers. Read more

Gendering animals - Representation, Identification and the Demise of Simplicity

Several of Darwin’s ideas about evolution have taken time to permeate into mainstream biology. One of them was the idea of the sexually active female. During the last thirty years androcentrism and schematic thinking on sex have been challenged by gender perspectives and modern behavioral ecology, but a great deal remains to be done. There is much suggesting that, in particular, the study and transgression of the boundary between theories on gender and sexual selection might produce surprising counter knowledge. Read more

Interview

The Women's Movement is Less Uniform but Radical Feminism is Still Alive

The women’s movement was engulfed by the political establishment in the 1970s and 1980s. But radical feminism has not disappeared. – At the end of the 1990s, new feminist grassroots movements emerged such, for example, as vegan feminism and girl power feminism, says sociologist Solveig Bergman. Read more

New Girls and Old Gender

For both girls and boys the "old" gender roles have become less distinct. The new, active girls are able to both speak out and assert themselves, in contrast to the quiet, modest and dutiful girls described by the schoolroom research of the seventies and eighties. The idea of the old gender roles lives on, unperturbed by the reality that children of today mostly have left them behind. How are the new, active girls met by teachers and peers, and how do they find out who they are in the crossing discourses of strong girls and attractive babes? Read more

When a Piece of the Past is Missing

Is history important in our lives? What if history was not written down? What if a piece of the past was missing? That is what it is like for many of the women in what we used to call Eastern Europe. Women think that it robs them of important insight and understanding, also about today’s society. That is why research, writing and filming is taking place now – for instance in Hungary and Croatia. The goal is to make women’s recent history visible again. Read more

Female Participants Make International Military Operations More Sucessful

From the beginning of next year, Nordic special forces can be sent to international crisis locations by the EU. The Nordic Battlegroup (NBG) consists of 2,800 soldiers who are to be ready to intervene in armed conflicts at short notice. Researchers at the Swedish National Defence College work on integrating a gender perspective in the NBG. Read more

Living for Tomorrow: Mobilising Gender Issues

The NIKK Living for Tomorrow project (1998–2000) in Estonia combined research with action implementation, approaching sexual safety and HIV prevention issues through critical explorations of how gender systems work and need to be questioned and changed in order to enable safer sexual behaviours. Read more

Interview

In Pursuit of Gendered Codes

She is renowned on the Nordic scene for killing the myth of the good mother, once and for all, at the beginning of the 70’s – to the relief of many women. While pregnant herself, she and some other feminist mothers with small children wrote the book "The Myth of the Good Mother". This was the first critique of the image of women in psychology, as it was being expressed in books of advice for expectant mothers. And indeed, childcare and the interplay between men and women in family and everyday life were to come into central focus for Hanne Haavind’s psychology research and her work as a therapist. Read more