Intercultural and Cross National Competence among Danish and Norwegian Students in School, a Gendered Issue?!

National and cultural diversification accompanies the pluralization of European societies. The post national situation is within and across national borders as people carry both national and cultural identities in their practice of citizenship in pluralist societies. Pluralization and difference call for several needs like communication and understanding in order to achieve, recognition, equality and justice, self-determination and identification with others. This paper responds to the increasing diversity and pluralization of identities by exploring the intercultural competence between young people in a selection of in Norwegian and Danish schools. Although the sample is Scandinavian we believe that the issue of communication, recognition and understanding is on most people’s lips in times of migration and immigration throughout Europe. The diversity, difference and pluralization call for experiences of inclusiveness and we apply Kabeer’s (2005) framework of Inclusive citizenship. This framework mentions issues of justice, recognition of uniqueness and difference, self-determination, identify with others and participatory parity to make friend s and show solidarity as important issues in feeling included. A selection of 1500 students in seven schools (two Danish and five Norwegian) was asked a variety of questions on intercultural competence and relations in questionnaires. Data were analysed in IBM SPSS using standard procedures in quantitative methodology. Although more variables seem to influence intercultural competence we focus on the gender issue. There is some variety in gender differences in the results but females display throughout most scales greater intercultural competence, interest and empathy than their male counterparts. On some scales the differences is unexpectedly large. The gender differences are therefore focussed, discussed and theorized.