Women-friendly Funding? Conditions for Women's Organizations to Engage in Critical Advocacy in Norway

Abstract

The main focus of this article is government funding for women's organizations and the ways in which funding affect majority and minority women's organizations' ability to perform critical advocacy in Norway. State feminism, as a descriptive model of a political process in which women's political mobilization “from below” meets political integration “from above”, is the point of departure, and the article discusses women's organizations' opportunities for political participation. The site of empirical inquiry is governmental support for both majority and majority women's organizations. The article explores the Norwegian state's reasons for funding women's organizations, as described in White Papers and funding guidelines, and the women activists' lived experiences of state funding. Norway is known for being a “women-friendly” society with an emphasis on political citizenship for women. State funding has been one way in which the Norwegian state has encouraged women's organizations' critical advocacy. This article suggests that state funding of women's organizations in Norway is one indication of a move from state feminism towards market feminism: minority women activists have to rely on project funding, which encourages an implementation role and leaves little room for minority women's own agendas; majority women activists are ambivalent about state funding because of low funding levels and increased professionalization. This article claims that advocacy pertaining to women's issues framed within a rights and justice discourse is weakened for minority and majority women, and that the structure of funding prevents a forceful advocacy role, in particular for minority women's organizations in contemporary Norway.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Beatrice Halsaa and the research group Citizenship, Gender and Minorities at the Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo. Also thanks to the editors and anonymous referees for constructive comments and suggestions.

Notes

¹ This article is based on empirical data collected for the FEMCIT project (Halsaa et al. 2008); however, here the analysis is developed further.

² Ethnic minority women and men had organized before 1979; however, the Foreign Women's Group was the first women's organization (see Halsaa 2013: 230–241).

³ Use of the terms majority and minority is not merely descriptive. They also refer to differently located racialized and ethnicized groups in Norwegian society (Gunaratnam 2003). Such terms could lead to under-communicating the differences within each category, thereby reproducing a picture of “us” and “them”. To avoid such pitfalls, I present quotes from different respondents in the article, and discuss nuances and differences in the data.

⁴ The MiRA Centre is the only national organization by and for minority women in Norway. It is a non-governmental, voluntary network organization, but it is not membership-based. MiRA has received State funding as a nationwide immigrant organization since 1993/1994 (Nødland et al. 2005: 43).

⁵ Participation in the formal corporate-pluralist channel includes (1) tripartite bargaining between unions, the private sector (capital), and government; (2) publicly appointed boards and commissions; and (3) participation in hearings. Informal participation includes lobbying and dialogue (Skjeie & Teigen 2007).

⁶http://www.bufetat.no/Documents/Bufetat.no/Tilsk_udd/Familie%20og%20likestilling/2011/Rundskriv%202011_Q-17.pdf. These guidelines from 2011 are similar to the ones in 2007/2008 when the interviews were conducted. I refer to the 2011 guidelines because they are available online.

⁷http://www.imdi.no/Documents/Rundskriv/2011/10-01693-1%20Rundskriv%20lokale%202011.doc

⁸ Since October 2009, named Ministry of Children, Equality, and Social Inclusion.

⁹http://www.bydel-grunerlokka.oslo.kommune.no/getfile.php/bydel%20gr%C3%BCnerl%C3%B8kka%20%28BGA%29/Internett%20%28BGA%29/EMI/Kurs%20grunnst%C3%B8tte%20061210%20BFR.pdf

¹⁰http://www.imdi.no/Documents/Rundskriv/2013/Rundskriv_07-13_Post-71_Frivillig_virksomhet.pdf

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cecilie Thun

Cecilie Thun, PhD in Political Science, Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo, recently defended her PhD thesis ‘Complex Norwegianness: National Identity and Participation in the Enactment of Citizenship’ (2013). Thun has also co-edited Krysningspunkter. Likestillingspolitikk i det flerkulturelle Norge [Intersections. Gender Equality Politics in Multicultural Norway] (2013). Other publications include: Thun, Cecilie (2012) ‘Norwegianness as Lived Citizenship: Religious Women Doing Identity Work at the Intersections of Nationality, Gender and Religion’, Nordic Journal of Religion and Society, 25(1): 1–25 and Thun, Cecilie (2012) ‘“Norwegian Women Got Gender Equality through Their Mothers’ Milk, but Anti-racism is Another Story.” An Analysis of Power and Resistance in Norwegian Feminist Discourse’, NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 20(1): 37–56.