Norway worst in Nordics for gender attitudes

Pollsters YouGov quizzed people from 24 countries in a survey published on Thursday, and found that Norwegians lagged in fifth place, behind Sweden, Finland, and Denmark — who took the first three places, and Australia, which, perhaps surprisingly, came fourth. 

 

“The Nordic countries generally outperform the rest of the world, which is no coincidence,” YouGov said in its report. “In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, which measures gender inequalities in health, education, economics and politics, the Nordic countries have the highest levels of equality worldwide.” 

 

The YouGov poll showed a significant gap between the attitudes of Norwegian men and women, something which was not the case in Sweden or Finland. 

 

While women had a net average score of 66, putting the country ahead of Australia in fourth place, the men were at just 53, dragging Norway down behind France to sixth place. 

 

The research was carried out by offering a series of statements to which respondents could agree or disagree. 

 

Several of the statements were conservative, such as ‘it is unattractive for women to express strong opinions in public’, while others were more progressive, such as ‘creating more opportunity for women should be one of the world’s top concerns’ and ‘women and men should generally get equal pay’.

 

Only 54 percent of Norwegian man strongly agreed that it is “good for a woman to have a career of their own” compared to 70 percent of Norwegian women. 

 

And only 57 percent of Norwegian men strongly agreed that women should receive equal pay, compared to 83 percent of men. 

 

The survey found that countries in the Middle East saw huge differences from the global averages. For example, 74 percent of respondents from the area agreed that “a wife’s first role is to look after her husband”.