I have never looked closely at the Norwegian laws regarding things like adoption, maternal/paternal leave, and marriage. I repeat what I hear from friends, when other friends ask, but never really knew the details. Thanks to some colorful charts in yesterday’s Stavanger Aftenblad, I got a little bit of a better understanding, all of my info below comes from page 4 of its August 31st issue.
Since the 1960 Swedish politics has based their childbirth leave laws on two premises – the need to give females time away from work to care for a newborn child, but secondly, on the need to get men into the house. They have had flexible leave since 1974.
I think there have been numerous changes in the law but as I understand it stands now it basically says you get 43 total weeks of 100% paid leave from work or 53 weeks of 80% paid leave. Of this, I think the mother has 9 nine of these weeks reserved for her, and the father has 5 weeks of the total reserved for him. I think you can freely divide up the rest. In contrast, in liberal Sweden there is a fully equal law reserving 60 days for each the father and mother, but provides you 80% salary for 390 days and then 60 Swedish kroner for 90 days after that.
This issue is big in this election coming in September here in Norway. Everyone but the Right party (~15% in polls) and Forward Marching Party (~20%) want to expand the reserved time for fathers and there is all sorts of talk about making the whole system more flexible so that you can take your leave well after the child is born, up until at some point while the child is in school. One reason for considering greater flexibility is that the Swedish welfare department (who I guess in this issue plays the role of the neighbor whose garden is better tended) reports that men are more likely to take paternal leave if they are allowed to do so later on in the child’s life.
Another issue is marriage and adoption. Adoption rights for homosexuals (who already have marriage rights here) and the question of getting rid of some elements of the marriage law which have gendered aspects to it (not sure what these are) are on the election agenda. Homosexuality was also in the news here because of some big conference on homosexual issues held in Norway recently. The Norwegian crown princess gave the opening speech in which she emphasized that discrimination against homosexuals still remains in Norway, especially in the workplace.
On the adoption issue:
Those who want to allow adoption for homosexual couples: Socialistic Left (SV 12% in current polls) Left Party (3.6%), Labor Party (34.6%), Red Alliance (0.x%), and looks like the Right party (15%) is considering something they call “step children adoption” for homosexuals, which I don’t quite understand. Against: Christian Democrats (5.6%) and Forward Marching Party (20%)
Those who want a completely gender neutral marriage law: Socialistic Left (SV 12%) Left Party (3.6%), Labor Party (34.6%), Red Alliance (0.x%) Against: Christian Democrats (5.6%) and Forward Marching Party (20%). The Right party doesn’t either I guess, since they say they want to “keep the partnership law.”
Hope you’re enjoying Stavanger! Interesting comments on these laws: I haven’t really been paying attention the election campaigns, but isn’t the step children adoption about being able to adopt your homosexual partners natural children. I’m basing my interpretation on your translation from the Norwegian; I’ve never heard of the law myself. Apropos Norwegian translations: is the Forward Marching Party Fremskrittspartiet? Perhaps Progress party might be a more suitable translation?
Ciao
Thanks for your comment Tina, that sounds like a logical explanation for the step child thing. And you are right, Forward Marching Party do of course call themselves the Progress party in english, and I am being a bit cruel by calling them the forward marching (forward step, frem skritt) which exaggerates their right-wing status. Even the dictionary simply translates fremskritt as progress, so I guess I will have relent and be reasonable…
US could learn so much from Norway in the way of maternity/fraternity leave. I looked into this once at my work place, just to see what kind of leave I would get. Twelve weeks paid, that’s it. Of course, Mike would get nothing. It would be so nice to live in a more “forward” thinking country like Norway or Sweden.
Just let it be said that Norway is veeeeery different from Sweden :] Those “neutral” punks… we have a relationship to them much like the English towards the French, only our history is more recent. During the war when Sweden was neutral and decided not to help their neighbours out, we had to send our royals to England since the Swedes had closed the border!
And yes we are spoiled silly in Norway by all the oil money, so we have great welfare. Only problem is the govt. is trying to make up for our country’s small place by hosting idiotic events like the Oslo peace deal between the terrorists and israel. Another thing we do is pour out money to poor countries, without checking where it goes. Intelligent leaders in Africa curse us for making their population lazy by providing welfare for them so they can sit on their butts and not help the country progress. +++. Norway also has an increasing amount of poverty, while you would not believe there would be many people living below the poverty line in this country. Also we have a super crappy health system, americans I know don’t even believe me when I go into detail about it. And still we pay an insane amount of tax here, over half our income goes to taxes, no I’m not kidding.
Anyway, you are right about the correct translation from Fremskrittspartiet would be “The progression party”. “Frem skritt” can be translated directly to “forward step”, but “Fremskritt” is translated as “progress”. These folks are not in any way extreme right wing as their socialist counter-parts often describe them as. I could give a whole speech about this party, but I’m going to save you the boredom!
Thanks for your comment, I’m afraid I don’t agree with most of your positions, but it is a typical appraisal that jives with the positions of many conservative Norwegians.
As for the progress party, I have several very rational libertarian minded friends who support it and there are many moderates to who support it. However, the fact that the party has gone mainstream doesn’t change the fact that it also shares its support with the most right-wing, xenophobic, nationalist, and mindlessly populist forces in Norway.
It’s odd to hear that accusation of sharing support with the most right wing parties. But I think I have an idea where it may come from, FRP is one of the very few parties who support the jews in Israel in this time of increasing anti-semitism. Also they have had (and may possibly still have some local ones) representants who defended the christian fundamentalism. You may call them conservative yes. But that other stuff just don’t fly brudda :]
Frp has long been the major anti-immigrant party, opposes or has opposed development aid to third world because their poverty is “their fault” it has several MPs who have a history of membership in patently racist organizations even though it now struggles to shake off its extremists.
Carl Hagen, while not overtly racist believes in creating an ethnically homogenous state because ethnic minorities create “disharmony”
They often use bogus statistics from nationalist organizations like Den Norske Forening.
They have repeatedly been infiltrated by neo-Nazis, much to their embarrasment, such as the scandal in 1996.
Some of their party members campaigned against Sami interests, such as in local Finmark elections in 1999.
The party also supports such outdated cultural essentialist nationalist projects like the 1999 formation of the Norsk Kultur culture organization.
They are against expanding homosexual rights, against gender neutral marriage, the list goes on….there is hardly a right-wing cause they don’t support…
I’m sorry….but no matter how they try to remake themselves, they are the party of the right-wing, the party of xenophobes, born in the fires of rascism, supported by all of Norway’s racists, and is the closest thing that Norway has to a fascist movement.
Wow, it has been a few years :] Just stumbled onto this again. Ok, so let’s continue here. While FRP do adhere to some populist trends (e.g. switching their perspectives on man made global warming according to popular demand), it is by far the worst party in Norway, for example we have SV (sosialistisk venstreparti), who by far exceed them in that area and they are in govt. now. As far as FRP being xenophobic, this is merely a simplification of a complex matter.
Immigration is a problem for any country, not because of the immigrants being a different colour, but because of the cultural clash. Let me draw up an analogy here;
My first day of high school, I had gotten accepted along with a number of my friends from my old school. What the school leaders did was they did not allow any person from the same school to go to the same class (classes in Norway are groups of people who follow each other in every mandatory subject). This was a very scary thing, and I was certainly panicking worrying about not having any friends close. I would have chosen to go with my friends, of course. However this was the best thing that could happen, I was forced to make new social contacts, outside of my own community (which you know was the tiny island called Mosterøy), and that in turn lead to me learning more about urban life and what city people were like, and it taught me how to relate to them.
I’m sure you know where I am going with this; the other parties have had a sloppy integration politic where they have allowed immigrants to group together and given them every point in the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need (which is a general problem with Norwegian welfare for certain groups, including child services which I wrote a paper on after having researched and interviewed govt. workers), including the self-realization part; through welfare. Which is great. But this takes away all incentive to go out and mingle, make friends, etc. Often coming from societies with older, stricter laws and moral codes, this creates much friction in society which hurts both immigrants and Norwegians. Having befriended several 2nd gen. immigrants from Africa and the middle east, they all seem to be in agreement and agree that their parents (first-gen. immigrants) severely impeded their and their childrens’ lives by ‘sticking to their own’.
This is part of one of the good things I have seen FRP arguing in a manner that none of the other parties do because of being scared of the ‘racist’ label. It’s 2010, it’s Norway, racism isn’t a majority issue. It’s an issue, yes, but not a majority issue.
Not being an FRP voter myself, I do admit that they have gotten unfairly treated in the biggest Norwegian tabloids. I believe this is generally what have made them so unpopular, and that whenever people get into arguments about the policies of FRP, it always seems to turn emotional for the opposition. Being a follower of the Popperian tradition, I tend to agree that emotion does not do much good in debating, and often means that there is no foundation for a good debate anyway.
Oh, you might also be amused to hear that our crown princess, whom you refer to in your article, officially talks to angels and dead persons. She has her own school which she runs together with her friend, they hold courses. There have been many interesting tidbits about the royal family in the years that have gone by since your original article. You might get a kick out of googling some of it.