Gender, citizenship and social justice in the Nordic welfare states: a view from the outside1

This chapter provides an outsider's assessment of the political ambition represented by the Nordic welfare-state model from a gender perspective. The Nordic countries lead the world and they hold the top five places in the World Economic Forum gender-gap index. The key in the half-full analysis is the highly developed social infrastructure of services and leave provisions, which have contributed to women's increased economic independence through paid employment and low levels of poverty. The chapter then presents a discussion on the ‘half-empty’ analysis. A number of commentators have been warning that diversity stands in tension with the values of solidarity and universalism, which are central to the Nordic model. One of the biggest challenges for the Nordic model is to develop new forms of gender-inclusive citizenship rooted in these cosmopolitan or reflective forms of solidarity.