The Nordic states were among the first in the world to enact general gender equality and anti-discrimination laws with low threshold enforcement mechanisms. Today, the Nordic countries top the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index – but have still not succeeded in closing the gender gap. This book draws a diverse and complex picture of the long, uneven and unfinished process towards substantive equality in four Nordic countries: Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland. It presents the Nordic gender equality model’s systematic use of three measures: overarching gender policies, legislation that has an explicit or implicit impact on gender relations and gender equality and anti-discrimination laws with low threshold enforcement systems. What potentials and limitations does the Nordic gender equality and anti-discrimination law regimes have to combat individual discrimination and structural inequality? Can these regimes function as a driver of political, legal, economic, cultural and social change, and as a corrective to laws, policies and practices that uphold existing inequalities, and, if so, to what extent? Can weaknesses in the equality and anti-discrimination laws and the way they are enforced hamper efforts to close remaining gender gaps? Rather than looking at the Nordic gender equality laws and policies in isolation, the book situates their development and transformative potential within a changing European and international political and legal landscape.

Originally published in 2004. Nordic Equality at a Crossroads makes a major contribution to the debates on equality and difference in contemporary Europe. In this absorbing work, feminist legal scholars from four Nordic countries provide a critical account of the latest legal policies in these countries linked with gender (in)equality, such as public financing of children's homecare, regulation of the labour market towards substantive equality, and the reforms concerning violence against women. These issues are matters of concern everywhere in Europe, and the solutions adopted in the Nordic countries will be of interest to all policy-makers. The increasing multiculturalism and the shift toward greater market orientation, however, have challenged the traditional Nordic equality policies. The authors argue that a structural and contextual analysis of inequality, also in the field of law, is necessary to encounter the challenge of pluralism.

Originally published in 2004. Nordic Equality at a Crossroads makes a major contribution to the debates on equality and difference in contemporary Europe. In this absorbing work, feminist legal scholars from four Nordic countries provide a critical account of the latest legal policies in these countries linked with gender (in)equality, such as public financing of children's homecare, regulation of the labour market towards substantive equality, and the reforms concerning violence against women. These issues are matters of concern everywhere in Europe, and the solutions adopted in the Nordic countries will be of interest to all policy-makers. The increasing multiculturalism and the shift toward greater market orientation, however, have challenged the traditional Nordic equality policies. The authors argue that a structural and contextual analysis of inequality, also in the field of law, is necessary to encounter the challenge of pluralism.

Moving beyond the question of whether an area of scholarly investigation can truly be characterized as 'legal', Exploiting the Limits of Law combats the often unhelpful constraints of law's subject-matter and formal processes. Through a process of reflection on the limits of law and repeated efforts to redraw them, this book challenges the general sense of pessimism among feminists and others about the usefulness of law as an instrument of change. The work combines theoretical analysis of the law's boundaries with investigation of the practical settings for changing legal and policy environments. Both the empirical focus of this volume, and its underlying theoretical concern with the limits of the law and its gender implications, render it of interest to legal scholars throughout the world, whether of EU law, feminism, social policy or philosophy.

Moving beyond the question of whether an area of scholarly investigation can truly be characterized as 'legal', Exploiting the Limits of Law combats the often unhelpful constraints of law's subject-matter and formal processes. Through a process of reflection on the limits of law and repeated efforts to redraw them, this book challenges the general sense of pessimism among feminists and others about the usefulness of law as an instrument of change. The work combines theoretical analysis of the law's boundaries with investigation of the practical settings for changing legal and policy environments. Both the empirical focus of this volume, and its underlying theoretical concern with the limits of the law and its gender implications, render it of interest to legal scholars throughout the world, whether of EU law, feminism, social policy or philosophy.