Women’s equality in the Scandinavian academy: a distant dream?

Abstract

While Scandinavian countries are deemed the most equal in the world, vertical sex segregation remains resilient in the Scandinavian academy. This article investigates women’s equality in universities in three Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, countries where women’s share of professorships is below the EU average. It explores the perception of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian women academics with respect to sex equality, hiring and discrimination. In doing so, it exposes the resilience of inequality regimes in Scandinavian universities and thereby questions the reality of sex equality in countries deemed the ‘most equal’. However, the article also finds that Norwegian respondents were less likely to report discrimination and it reflects on the reasons for differences between the Scandinavian countries.