ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the traditions, developments and challenges of the ‘Nordic model of equality’. Discussions on legal personality or anti-discrimination have merited less interest than the collective equality policies of the welfare state. A liberal discourse on individual rights has been fairly weak in the Nordic countries. Trust in the ability of law and politics to improve the situation of women has occurred quite naturally in the Nordic context. The Nordic countries and especially Sweden are well known throughout the world for their actively promoted sex equality politics. Equality politics in Finland in the 1960s and onwards were guided by the fact that Finland had one of the highest rates of women in gainful employment in Europe. The first wave of feminism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries gradually resulted in a formal equality between women and men. The ‘second wave feminism’ can be understood as a disappointment of the outcome of formal equality.
