Nordic Equality and Anti-Discrimination Laws in the Throes of Change: Legal Developments in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Iceland

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.

Anne Hellum is professor emerita at the Department of Public and International Law within the Faculty of Law of the University of Oslo, Norway. She was the director of the Institute of Women’s Law, Child Law, Equality, and Anti-Discrimination Law from 2000 to 2023 and the director of the faculty research group Rights, Individuals, Culture, and Society (RICS) from 2006 to 2016. She teaches courses on women’s human rights in context, national and international equality and anti-discrimination law, and legal anthropology. Her main research interests lie in how law responds to intersecting identities such as gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity and the plurality of intersecting international, national, and local norms. She has published a series of books, articles, and book chapters on these topics. She is the co-editor (with Henriette Sinding Aasen) of Women’s Human Rights: CEDAW in International, Regional and National Law (Cambridge University Press 2013), the editor of Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (Routledge 2017), and the co-author (with Vibeke Blaker Strand) of the textbook Likestillings- og diskrimineringsrett [Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law] (Gyldendal 2022).

Ingunn Ikdahl is a professor at the Department of Public and International Law within the Faculty of Law of the University of Oslo, Norway. She chaired the faculty’s research group Welfare, Rights and Discrimination (VERDI) in 2017-022. Ikdahl has worked on women’s law, non-discrimination, and rights to property and natural resources in sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, she is involved in research projects examining different dimensions of the Norwegian welfare state, including digitalization of the welfare state, welfare and rights after the 22 July terror attack, health rights and health services in prison, and the role of EEA law in Norwegian welfare administration. Her interest in gender perspectives, interdisciplinarity, legal pluralism, and legal theory cuts across these projects. Her publications include Kjønn og rett: Kvinne-, kjønns- og likestillingsperspektiver i jusstudiet [Gender and Law: Women’s, Gender, and Gender Equality Perspectives in Legal Education] (co-edited with Anne Hellum and others; Cappelen Damm 2022); ’Om kvinnerett og kjønsperspektiv’ [On Women’s Law and Gender Perspectives] in A. P. Høberg and J. Ø Sunde (eds), Juridisk metode og tenkemåte [Legal Methods and Legal Thinking] (Universitetsforlaget 2019); and Rettigheter i velferdsstaten: Begreper, trender, teorier [Rights in the Welfare State: Concepts, Trends, Theories] (co-edited with Vibeke Blaker Strand; Gyldendal 2016).

Vibeke Blaker Strand is a professor at the Department of Public and International Law within the Faculty of Law of the University of Oslo, Norway. She is the elected vice-dean for research at the Faculty of Law for 2020-2023. Since 2022, she has been the chair of the Faculty of Law’s Board for Equality and Diversity. In 2017-020, she was the leader of the faculty’s research group on Welfare, Rights and Discrimination (VERDI). She has been teaching on the topic of equality and non-discrimination law for almost two decades. Her research interests are connected to individual and group rights, discrimination, equality, diversity, and freedom of religion and belief. She is interested in legal methodology, the implementation and application of European and international legal sources within Norwegian law (EU/EEA law, the European Convention on Human Rights, and UN human rights conventions), and how the different legal regimes interact. She has several publications within these fields, including Diskrimineringsvern og religionsutøvelse [Non-Discrimination and Religious Practice] (Gyldendal 2012); Rettigheter i velferdsstaten: Begreper, trender, teorier [Rights in the Welfare State: Concepts, Trends, Theories] (co-edited with Ingunn Ikdahl; Gyldendal 2016); Menneskerettigheter i et nøtteskall [Human Rights in a Nutshell] (co-authored with Kjetil Mujezinovic Larsen; 2nd edn, Gyldendal 2021); and Likestillingsog diskrimineringsrett [Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law] (co-authored with Anne Hellum; Gyldendal 2022).

Eva-Maria Svensson is a professor at the Department of Law within the School of Business, Economics, and Law of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She was the director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research at the University of Gothenburg between 2012 and 2017, and deputy head of the Department of Law between 2018 and 2021. Her research interests are feminist legal studies, legal philosophy and theory, freedom of expression, and ageing. She teaches equality and anti-discrimination law and legal theory. She is a co-editor of several books published by Ashgate that bring together feminist legal scholars from the Nordic countries, along with special issues published in the Nordic Journal of Law and Society. She is the co-author (with Åsa Gunnarsson) of the textbooks Rättsdogmatik [Legal Dogmatics] (Studentlitteratur 2023) and Genusrättsvetenskap [Gender Legal Studies] (Studentlitteratur 2009). A second edition of the latter, with two additional authors (Jannice Käll and Wanna Svedberg), was published in August 2018.