Norway is upheld as the best place to live on Earth. It boasts high levels of social cohesion, standards of living, and gender equality and consistently ranks at the top of international reports that measure quality of life.1 Many interested in understanding why this is the case have turned to studying Norwayâs social policies. When New York Times journalist, Katrin Bennhold, toured Norway in 2011 in search of the key to its success she initially believed that Norwayâs oil money would be the reason behind its generous cradle-to-grave social benefits and ability to run a budget surplus. Mie Opjordsmoen, then leader of the Norwegian National Trade Union, corrected her: âWomen. Norwegian women work, pay taxes and have babies. Thatâs our secret.â2 Opjordsmoen was referring to the fact that Norway currently has one of the highest birth rates and percentage of womenâs labor market participation in Europe.3 Many credit this to the comprehensive parental leave policies that are in place.4 Norwegian parents may take 49 weeks of leave from work at 100% pay, or alternatively 59 weeks at 80% pay. Maternal and paternal quotas designate 10 weeks of the leave to each parent.5 These Norwegian policies are some of the most generous in the world, and scholars have found them instrumental in promoting gender equality.6
Womenâs ability to combine paid work with motherhood, credited by Opjordsmoen as the âsecretâ to Norwegian success, originated in the late nineteenth century. During this time, a number of Western European countries scrambled to pass legislation that would protect womenâs and childrenâs health from the adverse effects of mass industrialization and prevent social revolution.7 Norwegian maternity legislation developed within, and was influenced by, this European-wide push for social reform. Yet even in the early twentieth century, Norwegian maternity policy was more generous and comprehensive than its European counterparts and included paid leave from work , medical assistance, increased workplace rights, and financial assistance for both unmarried and married mothers.
To understand the reasons behind this adherence to, and deviation from, European precedents, this book details the development of Norwegian maternity policies from the end of the nineteenth century to the Nazi invasion of 1940. I analyze the interactions between state authorities, medical professionals, and women in the development, implementation, and revision of policies and reveal a process of welfare state development in which women played a central part. As the first book-length history of Norwegian maternity policies, this study significantly increases our understanding of the Scandinavian welfare state model and womenâs involvement in the creation of social policies.
Norwegian Historical Context
The particularities of the Norwegian historical context, including Norwayâs recent independence, womenâs early enfranchisement, and tradition of democratic policymaking, was crucial to womenâs ability to shape maternity policy to their particular needs and interests. Norwegian culture, geography and social make-up differed from its Scandinavian neighbors and influenced the political climate that developed in Norway. This difference not only affected the types of policies pursued by the Norwegian government, but also the role feminists, midwives, and the intended policy recipients played in the process.
The political situation in Norway at the end of the nineteenth century was conducive to the growth of democratic, grass-roots initiatives. Since 1814 it had operated under a liberal Constitution modeled after the one written in the United States following the Revolutionary War. The Norwegian constitution was based on a democratic structure of government with a one-chambered parliament, the Storting. Also in 1814, Norway entered into a union with Sweden as a part of the political fallout following the Napoleonic Wars. Prior to this, Norway had been under Danish rule. The new political union with Sweden entailed joint rule under one (Swedish) king and joint foreign policy. Norway controlled its own domestic policy, which after 1884 was decided by a system of parliamentary democracy, making Norway one of the first countries in Europe to have a parliamentary democracy.
Norwegian politics were never dominated by an autocratic class, but rather by coalitions of farmers and the urban middle classes. In 1900, Norway was a country of just over 2.2 million people, and the majority of Norwegians still lived in rural areas and free landholders were numerous. Industrialization came very late to Norway and small-scale, family-based industries remained prevalent long into the twentieth century.8 This contributed to the lack of an aristocratic or strong bourgeois class in Norway. Instead, the political elite in Norway were largely civil servants with academic training and liberal ideas.9 As a result, even the conservative party in Norway was much more liberal than conservative parties elsewhere.
When parliamentary democracy was adopted in 1884 it was an alliance of farmers and members of the urban lower middle classes who pushed through this reform and established the first political party, Venstre (The Liberal Party) . The opponents of parliamentary democracy, mainly the existing political elite and bourgeois class, formed Høyre (The Conservative Party ). These two parties would dominate parliamentary politics until the Norwegian Labor Party came to power in the late 1920s.
In spite of the fact that Norwayâs union with Sweden allowed Norwegians a great deal of autonomy, it inspired the growth of nationalistic feelings in Norway. A flourishing national movement developed in Norway over the course of the nineteenth century and focused on cultivating a distinct Norwegian culture and identity. The strength of this nationalist movement eventually led to the abolition of the Swedish-Norwegian union in 1905.
The development of a nationalist movement in Norway coincided with the creation of feminist movements across Scandinavia in the late-nineteenth century. While early Scandinavian feminist movements were quite small in scope and established later than in other European countries, they were able to achieve many of their goals.10 In fact, Richard Evans has referred to Scandinavian feminist movements as the âmost successful in Europe before the First World War.â11 Evansâ claim is largely based on the fact that Scandinavian feminists succeeded in getting important legal and educational reforms for women, and perhaps most important, womenâs suffrage, passed prior to most other European countries.
In Norway, womenâs rights activists were able to use the political and social climate to win universal voting rights for women prior to any other sovereign nation. Certain groups of Norwegian men had received suffrage following the signing of the constitution in 1814 and again after the adoption of parliamentary democracy in 1884. Feminists worked to get equal voting privileges for women as well. In the lead up to Norwegian independence in 1905, women mobilized in support of Norwegian sovereignty. Their efforts bolstered their claims for citizenship in the new nation and helped push through suffrage rights for certain groups of women in 1907.12 Feminists were not satisfied with this victory and continued to press for universal voting rights for women. This was actualized in 1913 when all Norwegian women gained the right to vote.
Norwegian feminists were also able to achieve many other reforms in the early twentieth century. They won not only voting rights, but they also saw to the liberalization of divorce laws and gained access to civil service positions. Norwegian feminist organizations prevented restrictive legislation for women workers from being passed as well. Norwayâs rejection of international conventions on the prohibition of womenâs night work, for example, was a major triumph for middle-class feminists and demonstrated the influence and power they had over policy decisions.13
Norwayâs lack of aristocracy and reliance on a more democratic, unicameral system of parliament can partially explain Norwayâs early implementation of womenâs suffrage and the feminist achievement of other liberal reforms.14 Not all politicians supported womenâs rights and many fought to restrain feminist influence over politics. Yet feminists found allies for their causes from a diverse group of political actors, including many from the Liberal Party and even members of the rural opposition.15 The lack of social and political tensions created political conditions that were more amenable to feminist demands.
Due to the small size of the Norwegian population and government, many feminists also had personal connections to men who sat in Parliament. In 1910 Kristiania , the capital (later renamed Oslo ), was a city of just under 250,000 people.16 The size of the Norwegian middle class at this time was also quite small. As a result, many bourgeois feminists had personal and/or family ties to men who sat in Parliament. Katti Anker Møller , for example, was the sister-in-law of Johan Castberg, a politician who would be appointed Minister of Social Affairs, Minister of Justice, and Supreme Court Justice during the same period of time that Møller worked to achieve greater rights for mothers. Møllerâs uncle, Wollert Konow, was also a high-ranking politician who served as Minister of the Interior, Minister of Agriculture, President of the Stor...