The conference has three aims:

1. Academic exchange and knowledge: The conference, which is interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary, aims at enabling the exchange and collection of knowledge from research on a wide range of topics in relation to men and masculinities in ‘the gender equal Nordic countries’. The main purpose of the conference is to be a meeting-place and forum for academic exchanges for researchers from all disciplines who work with perspectives on men and masculinities from different theoretical and methodological traditions.

2. Dialog with agents of gender equality politics: The second day of the conference is specially aiming at creating a dialogue between the researchers and political agents, NGOs, and private and official organizations who take an interest in the contribution of the research on masculinity to developing knowledge and society.

3. The formation of a Nordic society for research on masculinity: Finally, it is a direct purpose of the conference to form a Nordic Society for Research on Masculinities. The society aims at organizing a continuing series of future rotating Nordic conferences focusing on men and masculinities, and acting as a society for the publication of the journal NORMA (Universitetsforlaget).

Why the theme Changing Men and Masculinities in Gender Equal Societies?

The aim of the theme is to focus especially on furthering and strengthening the understanding and theorizing of Nordic masculinities and men’s experiences and conditions in the Nordic countries. The Nordic reality is characterized by a number of different interventions and institutions of the welfare-state which are aiming, among other things, to support families with a double income. For example, the Nordic welfare-states have tried to ensure gender equality, multiplicity, and prevention of gender-discrimination through an explicit gender equality policy. The conference will also put a focus on the need for theorizing of this specific situation for men and masculinities in the Nordic countries. At the conference the frequent use of anglo-american theorizing will be discussed, and questions will be posed of the expediency of working with universal theoretical paradigms, and of the possible necessity of independent theorizing in relation to the Nordic context which in some right can be characterized as a ‘marginal social fact’ as regards gender and gender equality.

The conference languages are primarily the Scandinavian languages, but several plenary and key-note presentations will be in English. The organizers of the conference will arrange workshops exclusively in English to the extent this is in demand and is practically possible. Accordingly, we welcome workshop papers in both the Scandinavian languages and in English.

Read about themes for workshops on the conference's webpages.