In 1959, the Norwegian Parliament ended the practice of establishing lower wage scales for women than for men.
“The Norwegian Employers’ Association used deliberate, cynical means to ensure that female-dominated jobs remained low paying. The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) failed the cause of equal pay by accepting this,” says Professor Inger Bjørnhaug.

Most pregnant women whose foetus is proven to have a genetic abnormality choose to have an abortion, but reaching that decision is a painful, exhausting process for most of them. “The women’s doubt, pain and sorrow make abortion more moral – in the eyes of society as well as her own,” says Sølvi Marie Risøy, a researcher at the University of Bergen.

“I like to give someone a chance. So I have an au pair partly for idealistic reasons.” Norwegian families with au pairs do not agree that they may be exploiting poor women.

Ten years after UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security was adopted by the UN Security Council, the issue of the role of women in war and conflict has achieved a prominent place on the international agenda. Researcher Torunn Tryggestad is concerned that the intense focus on sexual violence weakens the implementation of other crucial aspects of the resolution.

Post-apartheid South Africa: A white professor is accused of sexually harassing a non-white student and loses his job. His daughter is gang raped by a group of black men. Should the novel Disgrace be interpreted as J. M. Coetzee’s protest again the new South Africa, or is the Nobel Laureate saying something else about violence, desire and empathy?

Are gender research and natural science doomed to be on a collision course forever? Absolutely not, according to the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University in Sweden, where they specialize in gender research at the interface between nature and culture.

Interdisciplinarity – this is a topic that Jorunn Økland could happily talk about for hours. As the new director of the Centre for Gender Research at the University of Oslo, she has recently had an unusual number of opportunities to do just that.

Rape camps, sexual torture and gang rape. In times of war some men become brutal assailants. Many people have asked why this is so. Psychologist Inger Skjelsbæk wants to ask the perpetrators themselves.

Women in academia publish 21 per cent less than their male colleagues, and this figure has been stable for nearly 20 years. A new master’s thesis takes a look behind the numbers.