Gender and economic history in the Nordic countries

Abstract

Gender has long been an important category of historical analysis, nurtured by different and sometimes competing paradigms of research. In the 1970s, the study of gender was closely linked to the expansion of women’s history. Inspired by feminist and Marxist theories, this approach greatly contributed to the development of new insights on economic life, work, and remuneration in relation to women’s own experiences. Post-structural theories became more important after Joan W. Scott’s seminal article ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Research’ (1986). This approach considered gender as the way in which humans create knowledge about the world they inhibit, rather than something they are. The importance of research on economic history from a gender perspective has increased significantly since the late 1980s – and perhaps especially so in the Nordic countries? At least, this is a timely question to ask 30 more years after Scott wrote her article and partly transformed the practices of gender research in history. The inspiration for this special issue came from a seminar held at Stockholm University, Sweden, in the beginning of 2019, when a group of researchers in various stages of their career gathered to discuss the status of gender and intersectionality within economic history. Some of us were critical of how economic history was sometimes defined in a way that excluded the type of gender research we were engaged in. The idea of suggesting a special issue in SEHR was raised to highlight gender as an essential analytical category for economic history (and thus challenge narrower definitions), and to better understand the status of gender in the broader Nordic setting and beyond. Fortunately, the editors-in-chief of the journal were positive about the idea. An open call for a special issue on gender and economic history broadly defined, was announced in the spring of 2020. We received nine papers for peer review, five of them are included in the issue, spanning topics such women and entrepreneurship in Iceland, migrant mothers and workers in Sweden, the decision-making roles of women in Finnish household economy, and Danish public wage hierarchies. What this selection of articles, their topics, and theoretical orientation can tell us about the current status of gender scholarship in general or in Nordic economic history in particular, is however uncertain. Trying to answer this question also extends the scope of the special issue. What is still evident, is the absence of Norwegian author(s). This indicates that the efforts and traditions of including gender as a category of economic historical analysis do vary across the Nordic region as much as overtime. What was in fashion in the 1980s, are not anymore, or the opposite. The impulses of gender research within the field of economic history, changes as much as the institutional conditions for economic history research do.