SW: Norway to treat a lady

Published on Monday 17 November 2008 19:29

I CAN'T stop thinking about Alex Salmond's love life. Oh I know, what a cross to bear. It's not that I've lost all sense of reason (although I may if I persist), it's more that I can't help but wonder how a man can get to his age (not to mention the office of First Minister) and not know how to take a hint?

Don't get too excited, I'm not about to reveal Alex's bedroom secrets, I'm talking about his love affair with Norway. The northernmost country in Europe that enjoys one of the best standards of living in the world and that has just been voted No 1 when it comes to equality between men and women.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that SNP stands for 'Sucking up to Norway Party' given Salmond's performance of late. He can't seem to stop talking about it. And you can see why Salmond's smitten. Norway is a small, successfully independent country with a love for smoked salmon. It's got a population just shy of ours, it makes pots of money (about 40bn a year) through oil and it's got those lovely fjords too.

There's a problem with Salmond's crush though, in that Norway doesn't much care for the attention. They're not being snooty – the tall blonde snubbing the short ginger, if you like – it's just that according to the country's foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Store, the comparison between the two countries has "clear limitations".

And certainly, when it comes to equality between the sexes, our Norwegian counterparts leave us depressingly far behind.

According to a new survey (OK, it's actually called the Global Index on Gender Inequality – now there's a catchy title) Norway is tops. It scores 82.4 per cent. A gold star, surely? The UK on the other hand is looking at a try harder badge, limping in at – unlucky for some (women one supposes) – No 13 with a score of 73.7 per cent. That's down two places from last year and down four from 2006.

Women in Norway are better represented at the top levels of business and politics: they hold ten out of 19 posts in Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's government.

They're better-off in work, too. Supported by progressive, family-friendly employment policies, 72 percent of women in Norway who have children under the age of three work, while even more – 82 per cent – with children between the ages of three and six hold down jobs.

Ingvild Paulsen, 33, knows only too well the differences between us and them. Paulsen, a Norwegian freelance journalist, has lived in the UK for six years. Now based in Glasgow, she writes for one of her home country's daily newspapers part-time and has a two-year-old daughter, Marie.

"Now we've started a family, every day I'm becoming more and more shocked," she says. "In Norway it's very important that both men and women have the chance to go back into full-time employment so the government subsidises childcare. It's 120 per month for full-time childcare in great nurseries that are purpose-built with lovely outdoor areas. Here it's 42 a day. It's as if they don't want you to work."

In Norway parental leave (the clue is in the name) includes a paternity quota of five weeks with plans to increase this to six. Paulsen's partner got two days paid leave when Marie was born. New parents in Norway are entitled to 53 weeks at 80 per cent salary compensation, or 43 weeks at 100 per cent salary compensation. They are then entitled to flexible working hours and reduced working hours too.

"In Norway they want men to be able to be at home," Paulsen says. Not only does this mean that men get a chance to be more fully involved with caring for their children, according to Paulsen it helps to even out workplace inequalities, such as women discriminated against because they're of childbearing age.

"If men take more leave, then starting a family becomes an issue for them too, not just for women," she says. "When it comes to setting up a family as a woman, Norway has a lot more to offer than Scotland. Here everybody is just left to fend for themselves."

There are lessons to be learned here. And fast.

The Office for National Statistics reported last Friday that the gap between men and women's hourly wages in the UK has risen from 17 per cent in 2007 to 17.1 per cent this year for women working full time.

For women working part time the figures are even worse – the gap's gone up from 35.8 per cent in 2007 to 36.3 per cent this year. It's not much of an incentive, is it?

In Norway, things are very different. It was back in 2002 that the country adopted a law that means 40 per cent of nonexecutive directors in publicly listed companies over a certain size must be female. It only took five years to hit this target. As Kjell Erik Oie, deputy minister of children and equality, says: "A woman goes in, a man goes out. That's how the quota works, that's the law." Magnificent, understated, simplicity itself. I'm starting to think that moving to Norway is the answer.

We've had an Equal Pay Act for 40 years and things are getting worse, not better. And it's not just in the UK as a whole. According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission's 2008 Sex and Power report which looks at Scotland, in four of 14 categories there are fewer women holding top posts such as senior police officers and university principals. In another six, things haven't budged – there are the same number of MEPs, Judges of the Court of Sessions and local authority chief executives. Women's representation in the Scottish Parliament has dropped from 39.5 per cent in 2003 to 31.3 per cent in 2008.

So Mr Salmond, if we really want to snuggle up to Norway, what better way to do it than following their lead when it comes to women's rights? In Scotland, despite the fact that girls out-perform boys at school and outnumber them at university, they aren't going on to be promoted into senior positions in the workplace. That means that we as a country lose out on the contribution that they could make to our social, political and economic life. The argument is not that all women should go out to work or that even all women should aspire to be in "top jobs" – raising children is a top job, as anyone who's ever tried it knows – but there should be a choice. And at the moment, for many women, there isn't one. Unless they move to Norway, of course.