Deconstructing Nordic discourses on gender equality

Abstract

The Nordic welfare states are often characterised as ‘women friendly’ and political solutions developed have played a significant role as models for feminist research and policy worldwide. Typical to these countries is a consensus about gender equality as an important societal value and a strong public and individual endorsement of it. However, during the last 5-10 years there have emerged many critical voices in the Nordic political science community questioning and deconstructing the forceful rhetoric concerning gender equality in their native countries. This critical strand of research is often inspired by Bacchi’s policy constructivism, discourse analysis or postmodern theorising. Feminist analyses pinpoint the underlying assumptions of the hegemonic discourse of gender equality, evaluating its political implications and indicating its links to, for example, nationalism, nation-building, political subjectivity, consensual gender relations, exclusion of ‘others’, time, history and the possibility of societal change. The aim of the panel is to provide a forum for presenting these research perspectives on the ‘Nordic model’ to the wider European research community and for debating about the theoretical, methodological and substantial issues linked to the approach.

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