Public policy

Listen to this podcast on diversity management and how large organisations, like companies and trade unions, can learn from social movements such as Pride. While some of it may be lip service, the hope is that some elements stick, resulting in more diverse and inclusive workplaces across the Nordics and beyond.

Selected figures for 2018 and 2019 suggest that there is less inequality and a lower risk of poverty in the Nordic states than elsewhere in Europe. But when it comes to the type of welfare measures used and people’s preferences for the underlying principles of welfare services, the Nordics are surprisingly similar to many other countries in Europe.

Listen to a podcast about developments in disability policies and movements in the Nordic countries since 1945 in English or Danish! / Lyt til en podcast der omhandler mennesker med handicap: aktivisme og politiske strømninger i Norden siden 1945 på engelsk eller dansk!

Kalle Kustaa Topias Könkkölä was an environmental activist, politician and key figure of the Finnish disability rights movement. Having been physically disabled since birth, Könkkölä attracted nationwide attention when he was elected as one of the first members of the Finnish parliament for the then still young environmental movement in 1983 - which also made him the first MP with a disability. Today, Könkkölä is mostly known for his longstanding commitment to the promotion of disability rights, including his role in initiating the first Finnish disability organization with a human rights approach, the Threshold Association in 1973, as well as supporting people with disabilities in developing countries and humanitarian contexts.

Maintaining high quality welfare organizations is tough even in the Nordic countries with a myriad of unforeseen challenges to contend with, including budget cuts, personnel issues and reorganization. The focus of New Public Governance on how to govern networks between public and private actors is useful. However, the managerial, organizational and constitutional levels need to be connected in a legal framework where more organic and democratic collaborative processes can also be forged – leading to ‘co-production’. Research from Denmark can be helpful here: It has highlighted how collaboration between municipalities and independent day care institutions can meet both contractual issues as well as more unforeseen demands which come from society, parent-led boards and interest organizations. It is possible to achieve successful co-production through new ways of regulation which also safeguard public value, but it is crucial that it is developed and nurtured on both an operational and political level.

Danish nurses still receive 10-20% less in pay than male-dominated professions requiring a similar level of education. There are many contributing factors to unequal pay, but a recent report from the Danish Institute for Human Rights found that one key reason is the effect of the 1969 Public Servant Reform Act which saw nurses and other female-dominated professions placed at a lower pay level. In recent national negotiations, Danish nurses voted ‘no’ to a pay offer of up to 5% which was set to preserve real wages for public workers over the next three years. A citizens' petition to reform the law in respect of many traditionally female professions has also received the requisite 50,000 signatures for it to make it to parliament.

Listen to a podcast on the educational systems of the Nordic countries.

During the last century, the situation of people with disabilities in the Nordic welfare states has changed dramatically. For a long time disability was regarded as an issue for the national welfare services, which had a marginalizing effect from a legal point of view, characterized by medical diagnostics, accommodation in mass institutions and exclusion from education and employment. But, following the social and economic transformations after World War II and the ambitious promises of the Nordic welfare model, this absence of rights for disabled people was no longer deemed acceptable. Nordic disability rights activism (consisting of parent associations, self-advocacy organizations, public and political supporters) reached its peak in the 1970s and early 1980s, when protests and awareness campaigns led to a new social and rights-based understanding of disability as well as legal reforms. Today the movement is somewhat fragmented, but maintains an important role in policy-making and monitoring the implementation of disability rights.