Gender and Disability Research in the Nordic Countries

1
Gender and Disability Research in the Nordic
Countries

• Rannveig Traustadóttir
• Faculty of Social Science
• University of Iceland

2
Gender and Disability Research in the Nordic
Countries

• Overview
• The Nordic context
• policies and politics
• research and scholarship
• Main characteristics of scholarship on gender and
  disability
• Empirical research
• approaches and examples
• Nordic situatedness and politics of location
• Conclusion

3
Background

• The Nordic countries
• Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway Sweden
• Three self-governing regions
• The Faeroe Islands, Greenland Åland
• Scandinavia
• Denmark, Norway, Sweden

4
The Nordic Context

• Policy and Politics
• Nordic welfare states and disability policy
• Nordic welfare states and gender equality
• Research and Scholarship
• Is there a Nordic Feminism?
• Is there a Nordic model of disability?

5
Gender Disability Research

• Feminist research
• Nordic forum for research on women in the Nordic
  countries
• NIKK, Nordic Institute for Womens Studies and
  Gender Research
• Nora, Nordic Journal for Womens Studies
• Disability research
• NNDR, Nordic Network on Disability Research
• ???? Nordic Institute for Disability Research
• SJDR, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research
• Institutionalization of gender studies and
  disability studies in Nordic universities

6
Gender Disability Research in the Nordic
Countries

• Main characteristics
• Personal experience of disability
• personal accounts and stories
• Empirical studies
• focus on everyday life
• Theorizing
• imported theories
• Multidisciplinary
• Disabled researchers and writers
• Limitations

7
Gender Disability Research in the Nordic
Countries

• Empirical Research
• Main approaches
• Feminist perspectives on disability issues
• Intersectionarity
• Main focus on everyday life
  and relation to welfare
  services
• Families
• Education
• Employment
• Lives and experiences of disabled women and men
• 
  Cont.

8
Gender Disability Research in the Nordic
Countries

• Less prominent but growing
• Body
• Identity
• Socialization
• Discourse
• Critique of
• Welfare policies
• Gender equality policies
• 
  Cont.

9
Gender Disability Research in the Nordic
Countries

• Examples of recent research
• History and generations
• Childhood
• Adolescence and young adulthood
• Sexuality
• Ethnicity
• Fatherhood
• Violence abuse
• Oppression

10
Nordic Situatedness andPolitics of Location

• How do we handle our located situatedness?
• Empirical research
• located in own country
• lessons from others!
• lessons for others?
• Domination of UK and USA
• important contributions
• dominating and generalized
• NonEnglish/NonUK/USA
• must decide if we locate us or generalize
• problems of language and translations

11
ConclusionLessons for Disability Studies

• Disability is gendered
• Intersectionality
• importance of examining how disability intersects
  with gender, race, age, class...
• Regional rooting and international
  dimensions/cooperation
• Gender studies and feminist research
• learning from theorizing and research practices