NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research

12/12/2023

The call for papers for the 7th Nordic Challenges Conference is now open! Submit your proposals by 1 February 2024.

Looking forward to seeing you in Reykjavik!

The 7th Nordic Challenges Conference “Uncertain Futures: Nordic (In-)Securities, New Geopolitics and Societal Ruptures“ invites paper proposals, deadline is 1 February, 2024.

06/12/2023

New open access article : “You Don’t Want to Be One of Those stories” Gossip and Shame as Instruments of Social Control in Small Communities by Gréta Bergrún Jóhannesdóttir and Unnur Dis Skaptadóttir.

This paper examines how gossip and shame are a part of gendered social control in small villages/towns in Iceland, and how it affects young women’s lives. The analysis shows that slut-shaming and the fear of shame control women’s behaviour and sexual activities.

Enjoy!

Small, tight-knit communities often have the image of being places that are full of gossip and where everybody knows each other’s business. This closeness can be claustrophobic for individuals who ...

06/12/2023

🥁 Just published! Open Access Reading 👉 Interview with Anna G. Jónasdóttir on love power!

Published in NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research (Vol. 31, No. 4, 2023)

05/12/2023

💥 The number 4/2023 issue of the NORA Journal has been published. It brings together nine articles on closely related gender concerns in Nordic areas that include schools and the labour market, issues that comprise menstruation and sexual harassment, and social phenomena such as shame and invisibility. Get an overview of the issue here:

Published in NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research (Vol. 31, No. 4, 2023)

05/12/2023

Call for papers !

This special issue will explore the interconnections of race, nation, and reproduction in the context of Nordic countries and welfare systems.

05/12/2023

NORA in Iceland 🇮🇸

29/11/2023 - 10:40 Leading Journal in Feminist Studies Edited by UI Researchers Listen Researchers at the University of Iceland have taken over the editorial management of the NORA journal, Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research. The journal, published in English by Taylor & Francis, aims to...

17/06/2022

This open access article explores an obscure category of documentaries made by Swedish women in the 1970s and 80s, about women’s situation in the so-called “Third World” >>
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.2019108

(2022). Film Pioneers? Swedish Women’s Documentaries about the “Third World” in the 1970s and 80s. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 30, Nordic Women and the Transnational Networks during the Cold War: Collaboration, Conflicts, Achievements and Memory; Guest Editors: ...

10/06/2022

Open Acces weekend reading!

This article explores the Nordic Summer University (NSU), an independent and migratory scholarly organisation, as a platform for interaction and cooperation for the new women’s movements and an arena for the development of women’s research in the Nordic region.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.1973557

(2022). Nordic Feminism Reconsidered: Activism, Scholarly Endeavours and Women’s Research Networks at the Nordic Summer University 1971–1990. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 30, Nordic Women and the Transnational Networks during the Cold War: Collaboration, Conflicts,...

08/06/2022

This article is based on extensive archival research in Sweden and Denmark, with a focus on examining the anti-EEC print culture produced by socialist feminists in the early 1970s.

(2022). “Women Against the EEC!”: Limits of Transnational Feminist Solidarity. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 30, Nordic Women and the Transnational Networks during the Cold War: Collaboration, Conflicts, Achievements and Memory; Guest Editors: Elisabeth Elgán, Yuli...

03/06/2022

Alva Myrdal, Agda Rössel, and Ulla Lindström were three Swedish women appointed some of the highest positions attained by women in the UN in the late 1940s and 1950s. Their stance on the interrelatedness of women’s political and economic rights is in this paper read as characteristic of the Swedish Middle Way.
.. Open acces weekend reading! https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.2018039

(2022). The Swedish Middle Way and UN Experiences in Domestic Politics: Exploring International Welfare Feminism during Early Cold War Years. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 30, Nordic Women and the Transnational Networks during the Cold War: Collaboration, Conflicts, Ach...

01/06/2022

How and why does one become an international feminist, and how does one convince others to join in one’s effort to try to improve the status of women all over the world? Through the life and work of the Swedish feminist Hanna Rydh (1891–1964), president of the International Alliance of Women (1946–52) and the Fredrika Bremer Association (1937–49), this article explores the transnational entanglements within the international women’s movement during the early Cold War. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.1987981

(2022). The “World-Embracing” Hanna Rydh: An International Feminist (c.1945–1964) NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 30, Nordic Women and the Transnational Networks during the Cold War: Collaboration, Conflicts, Achievements and Memory; Guest Editors: Elisabeth Elgán,...

31/05/2022

Honoring bell hooks (1952-2021) with this academic obituary written by Victoria Kawesa in our newly published 2nd issue: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2022.2071989

(2022). And Then We Wept – an Academic Obituary of Bell Hooks 1952–2021. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 161-166.

26/05/2022

Here is an open access sneak peak into our forthcoming special issue on Nordic LGBTQ Histories. We are so excited to share the full print issue with you in august! https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2022.2071336

(2022). Panopticon in the Urinal? the Stockholm homo-sex Commission C. 1950–1965. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research. Ahead of Print.

25/05/2022

We end our celebratory streak of feminist and gender research with the great news that💥the full issue 2 is now online! Get an overview of the issue here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2022.2074664

(2022). Editorial. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 79-80.

24/05/2022

(Re)read Marjo Kolehmainen, Kinneret Lahad & Annukka Lahtis timely special issue entitled “Affective Intimacies”, which we had the absolute pleasure of publishing last fall. This issue is packed with brilliant papers so take your time:

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/swom20/29/3?nav=tocList

Frequency: Yearly ISSN: 0803-8740 eISSN: 1502-394X https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08038740.2021.1948724

23/05/2022

Steen Ledet Christiansen has been reading “Reconfiguring human, nonhuman and posthuman in literature and culture”, edited by Sanna Karkulehto, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, and Essi Varis. Here is his review:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.1928928

(2021). Reconfiguring human, nonhuman and posthuman in literature and culture. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 343-344.

20/05/2022

Do you know the almost forgotten Swedish author Ulla Bjerne? Get to know her in this interesting recovery of and reflection on her work by Boel Hackmann. It is open access!
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.1995484

(2021). “I Have Had Myself as Experimental Object”: Ulla Bjerne and the Politics of Female Embodied Experience. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 302-315.

19/05/2022

Next up in our celebratory line of nordic feminist and gender research is “Bodies get in the way: breastfeeding and gender equality in Swedish handbooks for new parents” by Helena Wahlström Henriksson and Christine Rubertsson. The article concluded our issue 4 of 2021 - and it’s open access, so read it, discuss it, share it with somebody, if you please!

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.1888791

(2021). Bodies get in the way: breastfeeding and gender equality in Swedish handbooks for new parents. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 330-342.

18/05/2022

Today we would like to direct your attention to “Inclusivity, Horizontal Homosociality and Controlled Participation of “The Others”: Negotiations of Masculinity and Aging in Two Older Men’s Communities” by Ilkka Pietilä and Hanna Ojala. In the article, the authors analyze ethnographic data from two Finnish older men’s communities that emphasize equality between men as an essential part of their ethos, and ask how inclusive practices and horizontal homosociality operate in these communities. Read it here:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.1981997

(2021). Inclusivity, Horizontal Homosociality and Controlled Participation of “The Others”: Negotiations of Masculinity and Ageing in Two Older Men’s Communities. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 316-329.

17/05/2022

Issue 4 of 2021 was a large issue with 8 articles and a book review. Here’s paper number 5 by Susanne Ritter: “Control through Compassion: Legitimations of Surveillance, Dynamics of Power, and the Role of the Expert in the Finnish Makeover TV Shows Jutta and the Super Diet and Jutta and the Half-Year Super Diet”.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.1939782

(2021). Control through Compassion: Legitimizations of Surveillance, Dynamics of Power, and the Role of the Expert in the Finnish Makeover TV Shows Jutta and the Super Diet and Jutta and the Half-Year Super Diet. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 290-301.

16/05/2022

Monday is here, and we are back: Today’s feminist must-read is open acces: “It’s Not All ‘Bout the Money: (Un)doing the Gendered Economy” by Magdalena Petersson McIntyre:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.1894232

(2021). It’s Not All ‘Bout the Money: (Un)doing the Gendered Economy. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 275-289.

13/05/2022

Klara Goedecke & Roger Klinths “Selling Swedish Fathers: On Fatherhood, Gender Equality and Swedishness in Strategic Communication by the Swedish Institute, 1968-2015” is our reading-suggestion for this friday.

Abstract: Fatherhood ideals have been changing over the last decades, and Sweden has often been seen as a fore-runner when it comes to both fatherhood policies and gender equality. In this article, we investigate how discourses about engaged, Swedish fathers and various formulations of gender equality are linked to and used in the discursive production of Sweden as a nation. We use three communication campaigns launched by the Swedish Institute (a governmental organization with the task of marketing Sweden), issued between 1968 and 2015. All campaigns emphasize modernity, rationality and self-development, but the earliest represents women and men while the latter campaigns focus exclusively on fathers, giving Swedish gender equality a conflict-free, already achieved quality. While the campaigns challenge established gendered patterns, they also avoid fundamental questions of power and contribute to rendering invisible a significant gap between gender equality in theory and in practice in Swedish society.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.1887931

(2021). Selling Swedish Fathers: On Fatherhood, Gender Equality and Swedishness in Strategic Communication by the Swedish Institute, 1968-2015. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 261-274.

12/05/2022

We continue decorating your spring feeds with must read-gender research! Today, we encourage you to look into Sara Lei Sparres “Gendered care, empathy and un/doing difference in the Danish welfare state: care managers approaching female caregivers of older immigrants.”

Abstract: This article explores how municipal care managers negotiate tensions in policy logics and state discourses in encounters with ethnic minority families in Denmark. It focuses on the “self-appointed helper arrangement”, an option in the Danish Social Service Act under which municipalities can employ family members to care for older citizen at home. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the consequences of this care arrangement from the perspective of care managers, focusing on gender dynamics and state-family divides in need assessments and care provision. I demonstrate how care managers slip in and out of their roles as administrators, health professionals and morally concerned citizens in encounters with different caregivers. While they focus mainly on equal access to care for all older citizens, sometimes they shift perspective and focus more on the wellbeing of the self-appointed helper in question. These shifts in moral registers are triggered by empathetic encounters with young ethnic minority women. However, care managers’ empathy is double-sided and ambivalent. Although striving to undo difference and include these women in a community of independent Danish female citizens, they also tend to place them and their families in a different category than the majority population and thus risk further marginalizing them.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.1978541

(2021). Gendered care, empathy and un/doing difference in the Danish welfare state: care managers approaching female caregivers of older immigrants. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 248-260.

11/05/2022

Next in line in our nordic feminist and gender research-SoMe-roll is Elisabeth L. Engebretsens ““Cake is not an Attack on Democracy”: Moving beyond Carceral Pride and Building Q***r Coalitions in Post–22/7 Norway”.

Abstract: The pieing of a far-right politician at the 2016 Oslo Pride parade was met with condemnation from the media and within Norway’s LGBT movement. The pie-thrower, a member of the European q***r-anarchist band Cistem Failure, was charged with committing an “attack on democracy,” a part of the criminal code strengthened after the 22/7 terrorist attacks in 2011 and sentenced to imprisonment followed by deportation. This article reflects critically on the dominant narratives of this event as well as Pride politics more generally, and places them in context with Norway’s increasing mainstreaming of right-wing populism and liberal LGBT organizations’ dependence on state protection and inclusion policies. Drawing on Emma Russell’s critical historical and q***r optic, Jin Haritaworn’s regenerative analytic, and Cistem Failure’s alter-narratives, I argue that Norway’s growing “security governance” promotes a divisive othering and obscures the violent exclusion of “undeserving” q***rs; this presents a deeply disturbing challenge to the democratic right to protest and public dissent. In turn, I advocate for the urgency of a transformative, coalitional politics of radical care - unafraid of confrontation and refusal, committed to the everyday acts of leaving nobody behind and to envisioning a world otherwise.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.2005139

(2021). “Cake is not an Attack on Democracy”: Moving beyond Carceral Pride and Building Q***r Coalitions in Post–22/7 Norway. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 234-247.

10/05/2022

Dear all! It has been a while since we last posted something here. This is, we guarantee you, not due to nothing exciting happening at NORA - actually, the case is quite the opposite: Too much happening, too little time to enjoy it!

During the next couple of weeks we will indeed make up for our lack of social media-activity, as we will be posting a streak (!) of the brilliant feminist and gender research which has been published at NORA during 2021/22. We hope you will read it, discuss it and give it the attention it surely deserves. A lot of people’s hard and dedicated work has gone into these publications; the authors, Taylor & Francis-staff and, not least, the anonymous reviewers putting tremendous effort in securing the quality of the journal and research published. Now, it is time to celebrate!

And what could be a better appetizer for this online celebration of nordic feminist and gender research than our wonderful and completely open acces (!) special issue, entitled: “Nordic Women and the Transnational Networks during the Cold War: Collaboration, Conflicts, Achievements and Memory”. This issue, providing new frameworks for conceptualizing the history of women’s feminist organizing, was released in january 2022 and edited by Elisabeth Elgán, Yulia Gradskova and Heidi Kurvinen. Dive in here https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/swom20/30/1?nav=tocList - and see you around for more thought-provoking research!

Frequency: Yearly ISSN: 0803-8740 eISSN: 1502-394X https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08038740.2021.2019974

27/03/2022

The NORA Conference is just three months away, and the April 4 registration deadline is fast approaching!

Follow the link to read more about the exciting keynote speakers:

The NORA Conference 2022 will be taking place at the University of Oslo on June 20th-22nd, and will feature a range of exciting keynote speakers, including Professor Raewyn Connell. The deadline for registration, April 4th, is fast approaching.

05/10/2021

Issue 3 2021 is out! This Special Issue offers a novel platform to rethink intimacies through the lens of affect theories. The volume is packed with six articles on affective intimatices that offer both alternative ways of researching and understanding intimacies and provide new analytical tools to reassess the entanglements of affect and intimacy.

The special issue is edited by Marjo Kolehmainen, Kinneret Lahad and Annukka Lahti.

Find their editorial introduction here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2021.1948724

(2021). Introduction: Affective Intimacies. NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research: Vol. 29, Affective Intimacies, pp. 147-151.

30/08/2021

REMINDER: Call for session proposals for the NORA Conference 20-22 June 2022, Oslo:

Tensions and Potentials in Nordic Feminist and Gender Research
This conference is committed to bringing Nordic feminist and gender researchers together, to create an intellectual space for situating and mapping the breadth and depth of Nordic feminist and gender research today, and for transnational and transdisciplinary dialogue. Building on and responding to debates from previous NORA conferences, it seeks to explore the potential of cooperation across internal differences, through open-ended dialogue in which divergencies of methodologies, theories and empirical contexts travel within and between sub-disciplinary collectives. The aim is to provide perspectives from the Nordic region on all levels of the research field, and to make these perspectives visible in the Nordic societies as well as the international research field.

§ Submissions must be in English.

§ Submission deadline: 6. September 2021

§ Sessions will be announced and open for paper submissions: 24. September 2021.

More information about the conference and how to submit:
https://booking.berg-hansen.no/eventportal/?fbclid=IwAR1u906jUoBnkmlx5vEmjfGEDa5FDBwMSh1jkmwZGIhMbzpD2ak4jYmbJPc #/event/99398/published/3760062d5ebcb786418be8733f0ad78e9e765d55

25/08/2021

Call for papers: Remember to submit to our special issue on Nordic LGBTQ histories. Deadline for abstracts is October 1st!

26/07/2021

Remember to submit your abstracts for our special issue on Nordic LGBTQ Histories! Deadline is October 1st!