기억과 훈련

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Work Life in Transition 2002:05
Gender and the Social Democratic Welfare Regime
A comparison of gender-equality friendly policies in Sweden and Norway
Kerstin Sörensen and Christina Bergqvist

This report focuses on differences and similarities in the historical legacies and the institutionalization of gender policy regimes in two countries usually seen as very similar. We show that there are some significant differences between the countries in how gender relations has been shaped and in turn shapes welfare state development.

Our historical exposé shows that neither Norway nor Sweden has a legacy of a pure male breadwinner regime. However, Norway has always been more reluctant to introduce policies, which encourage mothers and married women’s employment. During the 1970s Sweden expanded public childcare facilities and individualized taxation and thereby moved in the direction of the individual earner-carer regime with dual-income families as the norm. Norway continued to promote policies that encouraged more traditional sex roles. However, the more recent development during the 1990s has led to a policy convergence in that both countries, with some exceptions, promote policies in line with the individual earner-carer regime, which we consider more ‘gender-equality friendly’ than the male breadwinner and the separate gender roles regimes.

The construction of an individual earner-carer regime is an important and perhaps necessary, but not sufficient, step towards gender equality. Thus, we like to stress that our conclusion is not that Norway and Sweden have eradicated all kinds of gender based injustices, but that a gender policy regime that acknowledges women and men as equal individuals with the same rights and duties is a better prerequisite for the improvement of gender equality than gender policy regimes based on ideas about gender differences.

Our conclusion is that the political party configuration in combination with women’s political agency and strategies are the crucial factors for understanding differences and similarities in the development of gender policy regimes in Norway and Sweden.

Social Democrats have been dominant in both countries and we could have expected a more similar policy development. However, in Norway the male breadwinner ideals and the rhetoric of women and men’s separate spheres have been stronger among social democrats, including the women’s groups. In addition, Christian values and the Christian Democratic Party have played a more prominent role in Norway than in Sweden.

In Sweden the equal rights feminism has been the dominant feminist ideology in women’s movement. During the 1970s women’s representation in parliament and government were increasing rather quickly and women became political insiders with possibilities to form political alliances to promote their interests. In Norway, there was a stronger tension between feminists embracing an ideology of gender differentiation and equal rights feminists. However, the Labor governments under the leadership of Gro Harlem Bruntland made moves towards the individual regime. Interestingly, the Norwegian feminists have done this without completely abandon the ideology of gender difference.