The Norwegian WP4 report on religious citizenship, based on interviews with 20 women belonging to the Norwegian State Church, the Pentecostals, the Sunni and Shia communities was presented and discussed at a seminar at the University of Oslo on May 11th 2010. The questions addressed the extent to which religion establishes barriers or possibilities for women. What do faith communities – Christian and Muslim – do in relation to gender equality? How do religious women talk about their religious identity, gender equality and feminism? Does the notion of religious citizenship make sense to them?

WP 3 researchers Anne-Jorunn Berg and Berit Gullikstad, are, together with Anne Britt Flemmen, editors of a new book that has been published in Norway, Likestilte norskheter. Om kjønn og etnisitet.

By Line Nyhagen Predelli, WP4 leader

How Christian and Muslim women in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom talk about and view the women’s movement and feminism is one of the topics currently investigated by FEMCIT Work Package 4. Through qualitative case-studies, researchers in all three countries have interviewed Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Pentecostal women from the majority religion (Christianity), and Sunni and Shia women from a minority religion (Islam) within the three countries.

Femcit WP 6 researchers Tone Hellesund and Ana Cristina Santos have recently published chapters about Norway and Portugal, respectively, in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of LGBT Issues Worldwide (Chuck Stewart, ed., 2010, California: Greenwood Press/ ABC Clio).

Hilda Rømer Christensen, FEMCIT WP 7 researcher,  met with end users in Copenhagen, January 11th 2010, with an NGO group and the Danish minister for Equality, and January 25th 2010 with a range of end users from institutions and  equality units.

The goal of the meetings was twofold: To present the scope and preliminary outcomes of  FEMCIT and to discuss the applications and implications of gender-mainstreaming in advancing gender equality 

What kind of gender notions are implicated in Gender Mainstreaming?  And how is gender mainstreaming defined: as a concept, methodology, strategy etc?
Can gender mainstreaming be made more inclusive and contain other categories than gender? What are the gains and losses in the idea of equality mainstreaming versus gender mainstreaming?

How do the NGOs/Women’s movements and other agents in Danish and European Equality politics assess gender mainstreaming?

FEMCIT WP6 was recently represented at the international conference Families in Europe today.

The conference was a meeting place between researchers, NGO’s in the field of families, gender equality, lesbian and gay rights, and a variety of policy makers from EC and from different European countries.

Lenita Freidenvall, Drude Dahlerup and Monica Threlfall travelled to Santiago de Chile for the massive International Political Science Association (IPSA) conference, July 12-16 2009.

Drude Dahlerup spoke  on 'The use of different gender quotas in Arab politics' at the iKNOWpolitics conference in Amman, Jordan, October 27-28, 2009.

Lenita Freidenvall was a guest speaker and moderator at a Roundtable on Women’s Participation in Political Parties organized by OSCE-ODIHR (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) in Warsaw, June 23 -24, 2009.

Małgorzata Fuszara was a plenary speaker, organizer and moderator of the session 'Women in Politics' during the Women for Poland, Poland for Women Congress marking twenty years of transformations 1989-2009, in June 20-21, 2009.

Minna Seikkula: Childcare arrangements play a significant role when it comes to questions about women’s participation in society. But how have women’s movements contributed to childcare policies and who gets to decide what is good childcare?
Dr Solveig Bergman, Director of NIKK (Nordic Gender Institute) and the coordinator of Work Package 2 in FEMCIT on Social Citizenship, emphasises that the focus in the WP is on the impact of women’s movements and other gender-related organisations on childcare and parental leave in Europe.