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.