123
5
Environment both directly and through dissemination of our research results
through the media were made aware of the situation from the early 2000s onwards.
Causal link 7: As in many other countries, there has for many years been a socalled integration strategy in place for gender equality in Norway. This strategy
obliges all public organizations to conduct their tasks in ways that ensure political
and legal equality requirements, and this is supposedly overseen by, in this case, the
Ministry of Children and Family Affairs. However, the Ministry failed to realize
that the National Park Plan was implemented without requirements of gender
equality. In our opinion, this was owing to a basic weakness of the integration
strategy itself. The field of local environmental governance has probably been an
extreme case of ignorance of gender equality, and, ironically, in such extreme cases
where gender equality is ignored by more or less all the involved actors, the situation also becomes invisible to the Ministry in charge of the integration strategy.
Causal link 8: The last chain of explanation is that Norwegian media showed
almost no interest in this case of gender inequality. While media usually cover a
large diversity of gender issues, the lack of gender equality in questions on local
conservation have not been considered important by journalists. The issue mainly
affected rural women, and most journalists live in urban areas. The lack of media
attention made it possible for all the public bodies and interests who could continue their practices of gender inequality to do so, without being confronted by
media with the illegality of these practices.
All in all, our study showed that a strategy based on a responsibility of all
public agencies for gender equality in this sector failed. Instead, the result was
repudiation of responsibility by all actors at all levels. A vital explanatory factor
was that the conservation authorities chose to draw upon the local power elites of
men rather than provoke them with requirements for gender equality in local representation (Svarstad et al. 2009).
5.6 Another Day at Work
We started this chapter by recalling a day of data collection in rural Norway, and
we now conclude by recalling another such day a couple of years later. We were
three researchers attending a meeting of the Dovrefjell Council, which, in the early
2000s, was assigned the responsibility for one of four trial cases for local management of large protected areas in Norway. One of the items on the agenda that day,
was that we should present findings from our study of the process to expand the
National Park in the Dovre Mountains, as part of the National Park Plan.
One of our principal findings was that the expansion process had taken place
only with a modest representation of women in the local reference groups, and that
few women had been appointed to the Dovrefjell Council. Representatives were chosen from each municipality and each county authority as well as a non-voting administrative representative from each of them. Since the Dovrefjell Council was regarded
as dealing with matters of great importance for the area, the representatives consisted of mayors and other high-profiled figures. Most of the mayors of these munic5.6 · Another Day at Work
5
Environment both directly and through dissemination of our research results
through the media were made aware of the situation from the early 2000s onwards.
Causal link 7: As in many other countries, there has for many years been a socalled integration strategy in place for gender equality in Norway. This strategy
obliges all public organizations to conduct their tasks in ways that ensure political
and legal equality requirements, and this is supposedly overseen by, in this case, the
Ministry of Children and Family Affairs. However, the Ministry failed to realize
that the National Park Plan was implemented without requirements of gender
equality. In our opinion, this was owing to a basic weakness of the integration
strategy itself. The field of local environmental governance has probably been an
extreme case of ignorance of gender equality, and, ironically, in such extreme cases
where gender equality is ignored by more or less all the involved actors, the situation also becomes invisible to the Ministry in charge of the integration strategy.
Causal link 8: The last chain of explanation is that Norwegian media showed
almost no interest in this case of gender inequality. While media usually cover a
large diversity of gender issues, the lack of gender equality in questions on local
conservation have not been considered important by journalists. The issue mainly
affected rural women, and most journalists live in urban areas. The lack of media
attention made it possible for all the public bodies and interests who could continue their practices of gender inequality to do so, without being confronted by
media with the illegality of these practices.
All in all, our study showed that a strategy based on a responsibility of all
public agencies for gender equality in this sector failed. Instead, the result was
repudiation of responsibility by all actors at all levels. A vital explanatory factor
was that the conservation authorities chose to draw upon the local power elites of
men rather than provoke them with requirements for gender equality in local representation (Svarstad et al. 2009).
5.6 Another Day at Work
We started this chapter by recalling a day of data collection in rural Norway, and
we now conclude by recalling another such day a couple of years later. We were
three researchers attending a meeting of the Dovrefjell Council, which, in the early
2000s, was assigned the responsibility for one of four trial cases for local management of large protected areas in Norway. One of the items on the agenda that day,
was that we should present findings from our study of the process to expand the
National Park in the Dovre Mountains, as part of the National Park Plan.
One of our principal findings was that the expansion process had taken place
only with a modest representation of women in the local reference groups, and that
few women had been appointed to the Dovrefjell Council. Representatives were chosen from each municipality and each county authority as well as a non-voting administrative representative from each of them. Since the Dovrefjell Council was regarded
as dealing with matters of great importance for the area, the representatives consisted of mayors and other high-profiled figures. Most of the mayors of these munic5.6 · Another Day at Work