Feminism & Psychology

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Feminism and Psychology in the Context of Nordic Welfare Ideologies

and Policies
Hanne Haavind and Eva Magnusson
Feminism Psychology 2005; 15; 123
DOI: 10.1177/0959353505051716
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Page 123

SPECIAL ISSUE

Feminism and Psychology in the Context of Nordic

Welfare Ideologies and Policies
Edited by Hanne HAAVIND and Eva MAGNUSSON

EDITORS INTRODUCTION

This special issue of Feminism & Psychology has its origins in the Nordic countries. The scholars who have written the articles as well as we who have edited
the issue, are all affiliated with universities and research institutes in Denmark,
Norway or Sweden.1 The articles report on studies that the researchers have
carried out in a Nordic context.
Why a Nordic special issue? Is there anything special enough about feminism
and psychology in these countries to warrant a special issue of this journal? We
felt so when undertaking the task to edit the issue. We will point briefly to some
of the reasons before presenting the research articles in the issue.
The five Nordic countries are well known internationally for their history of
gender equality politics, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s especially the
increasing numbers of women in political assemblies and governments and their
comprehensive national welfare systems. Their women-friendly welfare ideologies and policies are often seen as setting these countries apart from most other
Western countries. When the state is felt to be a friend, there will be different
connotations to being a feminist, as well as being a woman, than when the state
is seen as an enemy. For instance, being able to use state-sponsored reforms and
supports as levers in negotiations both at home and at work will inevitably have
an impact on most womens and consequently many mens life choices. Thus,
at least some aspects of womens choices and personal actions in these countries
can be understood by relating them to changes in the workings of these public
support systems, and feminist research has highlighted such change processes. In
Feminism & Psychology 2005 SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi)
Vol. 15(2): 123126; 0959-3535
DOI: 10.1177/0959-353505051716

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these countries, welfare policies and their related practices have been deeply
influenced by, and in their turn also influenced, feminist politics, activism
and scholarship. One consequence of this influence has been that the womenfriendliness tends to become a taken-for-granted, sometimes invisible, background for daily life and for action, research and theorizing; feminist as well as
non-feminist.
One facet of the Nordic context that we feel is worth highlighting here has to
do with how such state policies relate to personal lives. The welfare state policies
have been set in, as well as contributed to, cultural climates that have facilitated
changes in the lives of both women and men toward egalitarian ideals. The
changes began when women were able to participate more extensively than
before in the work force and the public-political realm. Public day care for
children and paid maternal leave were soon instituted as general support systems
for womens increased social participation. Over time, such changes in womens
lives challenged mens life patterns as well. The Nordic countries are now seeing
several effects of those challenges, e.g. long-standing intense public debates on
fatherhood, as well as changes of the state-sanctioned ideals of fatherhood and
masculinity in egalitarian directions.
For readers with an interest in Nordic welfare and policy issues and their
influence on womens and mens perceived place in society, we have written a
commentary article (The Nordic Countries Welfare Paradises for Women and
Children?). It gives a short history of the welfare and gender-political systems in
the Nordic countries, and presents some of their central ideas. The commentary
article also discusses contemporary patterns in childcare, parental leave and
sharing of housework in heterosexual families, as well as the impact of recent
family legislation intended to involve fathers more in childcare in the home.
The second facet that we want to highlight relates to work as a scholar and
feminist within (and on the margins of) psychology in the Nordic countries.
Feminism in these countries has had some distinctive features, largely fostered by
early political alliances. These features have influenced feminist scholarship as
well for instance, the ways that feminist scholars have theorized the individual
identity transformations in women and men made possible and/or necessary by
political transformations. For readers who want to look closer at how feminism,
psychology and politics historically have intermeshed in these countries, we have
written a second commentary article (Feminism, Psychology and Identity
Transformations in the Nordic Countries).
The two commentary articles complement the five research articles in this
special issue. We hope that, taken together, the articles and the commentaries
will give a sense of the complex ways that sociopolitical climates, national
welfare systems, gender equality issues and feminist scholarship within and on
the margins of psychology have been interwoven in the Nordic countries over
recent decades.

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HAAVIND and MAGNUSSON: Feminism and Psychology in Nordic Contexts

125

The Research Articles in this Special Issue

Womens and girls individual lives within changing cultural settings is in focus
for three of the articles in this issue. The first discusses young womens personal
development seen in a historical and generational perspective, the second highlights the complications of young girls transitions into early teenhood in a
multicultural milieu, and the third demonstrates how abused women may move
into a life without fear. The fourth article then focuses on the organizational lives
of men and women in academic settings when gendered structures are under
attack and start to slowly change. The fifth and final article investigates how
developmental psychology and other kinds of mainstream psychology inform and
intervene in policy making in child social welfare.
In the first article, Monica Rudberg and Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen take as their
starting-point the self-talk of two young Norwegian women interviewed over a
10-year interval. They position themselves in very different ways; one as
paradigmatically modern, and the other in a postmodern position. With these
contrasting patterns of positioning as their springboard, Rudberg and Nielsen
discuss ways of theorizing changing subjectivities in a historical and generational
perspective, basing their discussion in recent developments in relational psychoanalytic theory. These theories, they argue, take the necessary steps lacking in
most cultural and constructionist views on subjectivity, and theorize how constructions gain individual life through individual biographies.
Dorthe Stauns bases her article on a study of a white, ethnically Danish
pre-teen girl who navigates on her way to become a teenager in a multicultural
school context. She crosses several social and ethnic boundaries in trying to
establish advanced positions that have no precedent in her milieu. These
positions turn out to be troublesome both for herself and her surroundings,
forcing issues of othering, heterosexuality and promiscuity. Stauns discusses
the concept of heteronormativity in this multicultural setting, arguing that her
study shows how it must be elaborated and complicated in relation to its intersections with age and ethnicity.
Margareta Hydn argues that feminist discourses on violence ought to more
explicitly emphasize and theorize battered womens agency and their different
ways of resisting violence. Omitting this, theories and practices risk reducing the
abused woman to her suffering. Dominant cultural discourses of resistance,
Hydn claims, are not adequate for theorizing the agency, and the personal
and social changes of women who leave abusive relationships. To support her
argument, Hydn analyses the stories of Swedish women who are in the process
of leaving, or have left, their abusive male partners. In her analyses, she focuses
on agency as reflected in how each woman positions herself in telling about her
process of leaving her partner, and how these positions change over time.
Dorte Marie Sndergaards article highlights intersections of power, gender
and age in academic positioning and hierarchy maintenance. She focuses on how
such processes appear in everyday practice, beyond formal assessments. She has

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interviewed men at all hierarchical levels in Danish universities and analyses

their stories about women in academia. The ages, personal assets, and academic
abilities of the women, and the academic positions of the narrators influence the
careers deemed most likely for women. Sndergaard argues for the intersectionality concept as fruitful in making sense of the discursive practices that her analyses tap in to. The meanings of doing academic and doing gender modify each
other in the stories, and are in turn modified by intersecting with doing other
categories.
Agnes Andens looks at policy making on childcare and child social welfare,
and shows how traditionalist discourses in developmental psychology influence
contemporary policies and practices. She analyses debates and scholarship on
three welfare cases in Norway: single mothers and child social welfare; cash
benefits for parenting at home; and equally shared physical custody of children
after divorce or separation. In all three cases, theories drawn upon in policy
making have been general and gender-neutral, but the practical consequences
tend to privilege traditionally gendered arrangements. The analysis highlights
how generalized discourses of childhood, informed by developmental psychology, tend to marginalize gender equality discourses when policies are put
into practice.
All the articles here included build, though in different ways, on closely
studied cases that are parts of larger studies, and are used as bases for theoretical
arguments beyond the specific studies. Such theoretical arguments supported by
selected cases systematically drawn from a larger set of material, is often seen in
the work of feminist scholars in psychology in the Nordic countries.

NOTES
1. The five countries in the north-west of Europe (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway
and Sweden) are often called the Nordic countries. Articles from three of these
countries made it through the review process for this issue.

Hanne HAAVIND has a dr.philos. and works as a Professor of Psychology at

the University of Oslo, Norway.
ADDRESS: Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, PB. 1094, N-0314
Oslo, Norway.
[email: hanne.haavind@psykologi.uio.no]
Eva MAGNUSSON has a PhD in psychology and is Associate Professor (Reader)
of psychology in the Department of Psychology, University of Ume, Sweden,
and a research fellow at the Centre for Womens Studies, University of Ume.
ADDRESS: Centre for Womens Studies, Ume University, S-901 87 Ume,
Sweden.
[email: eva.magnusson@cws.umu.se]

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2005 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.