feminism and psychology

http://fap.sagepub.comFeminism & Psychology

DOI: 10.1177/0959353505051716 2005; 15; 123 Feminism Psychology

Hanne Haavind and Eva Magnusson and Policies

Feminism and Psychology in the Context of Nordic Welfare Ideologies

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SPECIAL ISSUE

Feminism and Psychology in the Context of NordicWelfare Ideologies and Policies

Edited by Hanne HAAVIND and Eva MAGNUSSON

EDITORS INTRODUCTION

This special issue of Feminism & Psychology has its origins in the Nordic coun-tries. The scholars who have written the articles as well as we who have editedthe 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 feminismand psychology in these countries to warrant a special issue of this journal? Wefelt so when undertaking the task to edit the issue. We will point briefly to someof the reasons before presenting the research articles in the issue.

The five Nordic countries are well known internationally for their history ofgender equality politics, beginning in the 1950s and 1960s especially theincreasing numbers of women in political assemblies and governments and theircomprehensive national welfare systems. Their women-friendly welfare ideolo-gies and policies are often seen as setting these countries apart from most otherWestern countries. When the state is felt to be a friend, there will be differentconnotations to being a feminist, as well as being a woman, than when the stateis seen as an enemy. For instance, being able to use state-sponsored reforms andsupports as levers in negotiations both at home and at work will inevitably havean impact on most womens and consequently many mens life choices. Thus,at least some aspects of womens choices and personal actions in these countriescan be understood by relating them to changes in the workings of these publicsupport systems, and feminist research has highlighted such change processes. In

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these countries, welfare policies and their related practices have been deeplyinfluenced by, and in their turn also influenced, feminist politics, activism and scholarship. One consequence of this influence has been that the women-friendliness tends to become a taken-for-granted, sometimes invisible, back-ground for daily life and for action, research and theorizing; feminist as well asnon-feminist.

One facet of the Nordic context that we feel is worth highlighting here has todo with how such state policies relate to personal lives. The welfare state policieshave been set in, as well as contributed to, cultural climates that have facilitatedchanges in the lives of both women and men toward egalitarian ideals. Thechanges began when women were able to participate more extensively thanbefore in the work force and the public-political realm. Public day care forchildren and paid maternal leave were soon instituted as general support systemsfor womens increased social participation. Over time, such changes in womenslives challenged mens life patterns as well. The Nordic countries are now seeingseveral effects of those challenges, e.g. long-standing intense public debates onfatherhood, as well as changes of the state-sanctioned ideals of fatherhood andmasculinity 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 acommentary article (The Nordic Countries Welfare Paradises for Women andChildren?). It gives a short history of the welfare and gender-political systems inthe Nordic countries, and presents some of their central ideas. The commentaryarticle also discusses contemporary patterns in childcare, parental leave and sharing of housework in heterosexual families, as well as the impact of recentfamily 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 byearly political alliances. These features have influenced feminist scholarship aswell for instance, the ways that feminist scholars have theorized the individualidentity transformations in women and men made possible and/or necessary bypolitical transformations. For readers who want to look closer at how feminism,psychology and politics historically have intermeshed in these countries, we havewritten a second commentary article (Feminism, Psychology and IdentityTransformations 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 onthe margins of psychology have been interwoven in the Nordic countries overrecent decades.

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The Research Articles in this Special Issue

Womens and girls individual lives within changing cultural settings is in focusfor three of the articles in this issue. The first discusses young womens personaldevelopment seen in a historical and generational perspective, the second high-lights the complications of young girls transitions into early teenhood in a multicultural milieu, and the third demonstrates how abused women may moveinto a life without fear. The fourth article then focuses on the organizational livesof men and women in academic settings when gendered structures are underattack and start to slowly change. The fifth and final article investigates howdevelopmental psychology and other kinds of mainstream psychology inform andintervene in policy making in child social welfare.

In the first article, Monica Rudberg and Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen take as theirstarting-point the self-talk of two young Norwegian women interviewed over a10-year interval. They position themselves in very different ways; one as paradigmatically modern, and the other in a postmodern position. With thesecontrasting patterns of positioning as their springboard, Rudberg and Nielsen discuss ways of theorizing changing subjectivities in a historical and generationalperspective, basing their discussion in recent developments in relational psycho-analytic theory. These theories, they argue, take the necessary steps lacking inmost cultural and constructionist views on subjectivity, and theorize how con-structions 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 multiculturalschool context. She crosses several social and ethnic boundaries in trying toestablish 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 discussesthe concept of heteronormativity in this multicultural setting, arguing that herstudy shows how it must be elaborated and complicated in relation to its inter-sections with age and ethnicity.

Margareta Hydn argues that feminist discourses on violence ought to moreexplicitly emphasize and theorize battered womens agency and their differentways of resisting violence. Omitting this, theories and practices risk reducing theabused 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 herargument, Hydn analyses the stories of Swedish women who are in the processof leaving, or have left, their abusive male partners. In her analyses, she focuseson agency as reflected in how each woman positions herself in telling about herprocess of leaving her partner, and how these positions change over time.

Dorte Marie Sndergaards article highlights intersections of power, genderand age in academic positioning and hierarchy maintenance. She focuses on howsuch processes appear in everyday practice, beyond formal assessments. She has

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interviewed men at all hierarchical levels in Danish universities and analysestheir stories about women in academia. The ages, personal assets, and academicabilities of the women, and the academic positions of the narrators influence thecareers deemed most likely for women. Sndergaard argues for the intersection-ality concept as fruitful in making sense of the discursive practices that her analy-ses tap in to. The meanings of doing academic and doing gender modify eachother in the stories, and are in turn modified by intersecting with doing othercategories.

Agnes Andens looks at policy making on childcare and child social welfare,and shows how traditionalist discourses in developmental psychology influencecontemporary policies and practices. She analyses debates and scholarship onthree welfare cases in Norway: single mothers and child social welfare; cashbenefits for parenting at home; and equally shared physical custody of childrenafter divorce or separation. In all three cases, theories drawn upon in policy making have been general and gender-neutral, but the practical consequencestend to privilege traditionally gendered arrangements. The analysis highlightshow generalized discourses of childhood, informed by developmental psy-chology, tend to marginalize gender equality discourses when policies are putinto 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 theoreticalarguments beyond the specific studies. Such theoretical arguments supported byselected cases systematically drawn from a larger set of material, is often seen inthe work of feminist scholars in psychology in the Nordic countries.

NOTES

1. The five countries in the north-west of Europe (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norwayand 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 atthe University of Oslo, Norway.ADDRESS: Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, PB. 1094, N-0314Oslo, Norway. [email: [email protected]]

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: [email protected]]

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