Innovative Women and Gender‐Power in Norwegian Regional Development Policy1

1. The article draws on research conducted in the period 1990–2000 representing the empirical basis for the author's PhD thesis (Lotherington 2002). The method used is reflexive, empirical research with a combination of archive studies, in‐depth interviews, and participant observation. The names used are fictitious.

Abstract

The article analyses the Norwegian woman‐oriented regional development policy in a power perspective. The aim is to understand why the policy never was accepted as a gender equality issue. Equality between women and men was regularly on the agenda but was always rejected and defined as irrelevant for a policy aiming at maintaining the settlement pattern in the rural areas. Even attempts at discussing the distinction between gender equality policy and woman‐oriented regional development policy was rejected. The article elaborates on why, via an analysis of individual, institutional and discursive power within the regional policy area, and argues that the legitimacy of the entire policy would be at stake if such a discussion were allowed.

Notes

1. The article draws on research conducted in the period 1990–2000 representing the empirical basis for the author's PhD thesis (Lotherington 2002). The method used is reflexive, empirical research with a combination of archive studies, in‐depth interviews, and participant observation. The names used are fictitious.

2. Gender equality was a highly controversial theme in Norway during the 1970s. Part of the feminist movement was dissatisfied with what turned out to be the official Norwegian gender equality policy, namely a liberal equal rights and opportunities approach rather than a more radical, women's liberation approach. In this article distinctions between various forms of gender equality approaches are not important, and will thus not be elaborated on. For a discussion of different understandings and conceptions of gender see, e.g., Lotherington 2002.