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Women in Local Politics: The Norwegian Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Ingunn Norderval Means
Ingunn Norderval Means
Affiliation:
McMaster University
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , September 1972 , pp. 365 - 388
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Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1972

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References

1 “Initial Recruitment of Elected Officials in the U.S. – A Model,” Journal of Politics, 24 (Nov. 1962), 708.

2 See, for instance, Berelson, Bernard R.et al., Voting (Chicago, 1954Google Scholar); Campbell, Anguset al., The American Voter (New York, 1960Google Scholar); Rokkan, Stein and Campbell, Angus, “Citizen Participation in Political Life, Norway and U.S.A.,” International Social Science Journal, 12, no 1 (1960), 69–99Google Scholar; Valen, Henry and Katz, Daniel, Political Parties in Norway (Oslo, 1967Google Scholar), chap. 9. For a general discussion of the literature on this point, see Lane, Robert E., Political Life (pb. ed., New York, 1959Google Scholar), chap. 15.

3 Political Participation (pb. ed., Chicago, 1965), 20.

4 Wahlke, Johnet al., The Legislative System (New York, 1962Google Scholar), chap. 4.

5 For a discussion of the literature on these points, see Milbrath, Political Participation, chap. 5.

6 Ibid.

7 Pathways to Parliament (Madison, Wis., 1965), 278.

8 Epstein, Leon D., Political Parties in Western Democracies (New York, 1967), 167–88.Google Scholar See also Valen, Henry, “The Recruitment of Parliamentary Nominees in Norway,” Scandinavian Political Studies, 1 (1966), 144–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Key, V.O. Jr., Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups (4th ed., New York, 1958), 416–18Google Scholar, and Ranney, Pathways to Parliament, 275.

10 Crotty, William J., “The Party Organization and Its Activities,” in Crotty, William J., ed., Approaches to the Study of Party Organization (Boston, 1968), 247–301.Google Scholar

11 See Hole, Judith and Levine, Ellen, Rebirth of Feminism (New York, 1971), 345–6.Google Scholar A survey sponsored by the Women's Caucus for Political Science of all the articles written for the American Political Science Review since its first issue was published in 1903, revealed that over almost seven decades only five of the more than 2800 articles dealt with women and politics – four of these concerned themselves with women in Europe.

12 Duverger, Maurice, The Political Role of Women (Paris, 1955Google Scholar). Two studies by Professor Emmy E. Werner on American Congresswomen and women state legislators show the same patterns to be operative in the United States. The majority of the women who have served in Congress have been college graduates and members of various professions such as teaching, law, and communications. At the lower levels of the system, in the state legislatures, a smaller proportion were college graduates, but the vast majority of the state legislators, too, had business or professional experience. See Werner, Emmy E., “Women in Congress,” Western Political Quarterly, 19 (March 1966), 16–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Women in the State Legislatures,” ibid., 21 (March 1968), 40–50.

13 Austin Ranney found widespread evidence in Great Britain that women were believed to be ineffective, weak, and unacceptable as political candidates. Pathways to Parliament, 95. Lane, likewise, suggests that to be a woman is to be at a disadvantage in politics. Poltical Life, 54.

14 Political Role of Women, 128.

15 In Oslo, women now occupy 48 of the 85 seats on the city council, an increase of 100 per cent. The country's second biggest city, Trondheim, increased its female representation from 17 to 46 out of 85, and Asker, a suburban community adjacent to Oslo, has 27 women and 20 men in the new municipal council. In the country as a whole, their representation has increased from slightly less than 10 per cent to 15 per cent. See Statistisk Sentralbyrå, NOS A 214, Kommunevalgene 1967, Hefte I, table VI, pp. 36–51, for the results of the 1967 municipal elections in the various municipalities. For 1971 results, see Aftenposten, Sept. 27, 1971, p. 1; Arbeiderbladet, Sept. 23, 1971, p. 1; Aftenposten, Sept. 24, 1971, p. 1; and Skard, Torild, “Finnes en egen kvinnepolitikk,” Dagbladet, Oct. 2, 1971, p. 2.Google Scholar At the time of writing, published data are not yet available from the Central Bureau of Statistics on the 1971 election results.

16 Lester Milbrath's tentative model of political participation provides the organizational framework for this article. Building inductively from a large body of empirical literature, Milbrath has sketched a model whose central variables are the individual's personality, his social position, the environmental stimuli he is subjected to, and, finally, the political setting. See Political Participation, chap. 1.

17 See Means, Ingunn Norderval, “Norwegian Political Recruitment Patterns and Recruitment of Women,” unpublished PH D dissertation, University of Washington, 1971.Google Scholar

18 In the 1967 municipal elections, women in the age groups from 25 to 41 voted consistently higher than men in the same age groups. Among the twenty-five-year-old voters, 3 per cent more of the eligible women than men voted, and among the thirty-one-year-old voters, the difference was 3.5 per cent. The same trend was manifest in the Storting election of 1969, when women from 24 to 43 consistently voted higher than the men in the same age groups. Again, the largest difference was in the thirty-one-year-old group, where the women outvoted the men at a rate of 3 per cent. See Sentralbyrâ, Statistisk, NOS A 279, Kommunevalgene 1967, Hefte II (Oslo, 1969Google Scholar), table 1, p. 11, and NOS A 354, Stortingsvalget 1969, Hefte III (Oslo, 1970), table 1, p. 11. The results of the 1971 municipal elections are not yet available from the Bureau of Statistics. It is worth noting that the voting performance of women in these age groups represents a complete reversal of the pattern of the early 1950s, when Erik Grønseth found women under forty to have the highest incidence of non-voting. See his “The Political Role of Women in Norway,” in Duverger, The Political Role of Women, 198.

19 See Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 31, 1971, p. 6.

20 All the material pertaining to the 1967 campaign to elect more women is kept in a separate file, Kvinner i Kommunestyrene, in the Storting library, where it was made available to this writer.

21 Kvinner i Kommunestyrene, “Foreløbig rapport fra Arbeidsutvalget. Fase I: Vârkampanjen,” 3/4–1967, mimeo.

22 The German electoral system, which features a combination of proportional representation and single-member districts, has apparently resulted in proportionately more female candidacies in the list elections than in the single-member districts. Duverger, The Political Role of Women, 80. One may also note that in Norway the first woman was elected to the Storting the same year that proportional representation was introduced. Three major countries where single-member districts are still the rule, the United States, Great Britain, and Canada, all have an extremely low incidence of women in their legislative bodies.

23 Lov om kommunevalg av 10 juli 1925, paragraph 31. Norges Lover 1682–1969, p. 979.

24 Ibid.

25 See, for instance, the discussion of this point in the Centre party's report on nominating procedures, “Innstilling fra Senterpartiets nominasjonsutvalg” (Oslo, 1970), mimeo., p. 5: “… a family of 8, an interest group of 12, or a village with 20 voters may completely determine the composition of the party group in a municipal council if a certain distribution has not been secured previously through cumulation.” The report continues: “It is the commission's view that this is a poorer form of democracy expressing itself, than that which may be established through a seriously weighed cumulation following a thorough and responsible nomination process. One should also be aware of the fact that a party with an uncumulated list may get its own choice of persons determined completely or partially by an organized group within another party.”

26 See n. 23 above. There has always been considerable tampering with the party lists in municipal elections, in spite of urgent pleas from the leaders for “clean lists.” Several of the women councillors interviewed by this writer reported having received great numbers of votes from adherents of other parties. Although the system complicates the counting of the ballots, it has seldom caused any major surprises in previous elections.

27 Duverger, The Political Role of Women, 89. It is impossible to say with certainty whether this elimination of women candidates in the past has been due to “male chauvinism” or women's rejection of their own sex, for there is no way of determining whether men or women cast the altered ballots. The politicians interviewed by this writer, however, tended to believe that disgruntled men were behind such actions in the past. The newspaper Nordlys expressed the same suspicion editorially after the 1963 election in Tromsø, when the number of women in the city council was reduced from 10 to 6 as a result of deletions of women candidates from the lists: “Those fellows who have been behind this elimination probably think they have done a good job, and have no notion of what harm they have caused through their mediaeval behaviour:” Nordlys, Sept. 28, 1963, p. 2.

28 Arbeiderbladet, Sept. 21, 1967, p. 1.

29 Nordlys, Sept. 28, 1967, p. 9.

30 Statistisk Sentralbyrå, NOS XII 138, Kommunevalgene 1963, table IV, pp. 44–58, and Nos A 214, Kommunevalgene 1967, Hefte I, table VI, pp. 36–46.

31 Conclusion based on analysis of election results in all provinces. See Kommunevalgene 1967, Hefte I, tables I and IV, pp. 8–9,32.

32 See Aftenposten, Sept. 2, 1971, p. 9.

33 Vethe, Eva, “Et sekterisk kvinneparti eller: Ut av barndommen,” Aftenposten, June 10, 1971, p. 2.Google Scholar See also the article by author Lange-Nielsen, Sissel, “Gudinnene hjelpe oss,” Aftenposten, June 11, 1971, p. 3.Google Scholar Declares Mrs Lange-Nielsen: “I was gradually convinced that it was necessary to try with a women's party at the present, in order to awaken, call for unity, and attempt putting power behind women's social demands.”

34 The first Norwegian Women's party was founded in 1927 in Oslo. In the municipal election there the following year, its list received only 574 votes. The party folded quietly in 1932, after its top leaders left it. See Aftenposten, June 17, 1971, p. 2. In Bodø, a city in northern Norway, a women's party was founded in 1945, and succeeded in electing two representatives to the city council. Interest in the party faded in the early fifties, and it has left no permanent traces in local politics. See Aftenposten, June 7, 1971, p. 10.

35 For a discussion of the roles of the parties’ women's auxiliaries, see Means, “Norwegian Political Recruitment Patterns,” 192–205 and 271–3. While a majority of the women politicians belonged to the women's auxiliaries, opinion regarding their usefulness was divided, with many women regarding them as dysfunctional to the politicization and activation of their sex. It is worth noting that the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada views women's party auxiliaries in this country in the same light. States the report: “The impression gained from interviews with men and women active in politics is that the women's associations divert energies into the mechanics of running the party that could be more effectively used at other levels. Some went so far as to state that separate women's associations hinder rather than help the participation of women at policy-making levels; that they are a deterrent rather than an asset to women who wish to contribute in more significant ways.” Candidates for political office, or elected representatives, the commissioners reported, did not in a single instance consider that membership in such associations had been a determining factor in their running for office. Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada (Ottawa, 1970), 346. Similar observations are often heard in regard to women's organizations within professional groups. Thus, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein contends that such organizations have deflected women's participation in the professional groups, and depleted the pool of potential women leaders within the professional organizations themselves. See Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs, Woman's Place (Berkeley, 1971), 187.Google Scholar

36 See Means, “Norwegian Political Recruitment Patterns,” chap. 3. The fact that women are usually found in lower spots on the tickets suggests a parallel to the situation in countries with single-member districts, where women candidates tend to be running in constituencies considered as certain losses by the parties. J.F.S. Ross notes in his study of female candidatures in Great Britain that an “… abnormal proportion of these hopeless struggles… have fallen to the lot of women, in comparison with the number of ‘safe seats’ or even border-line constituencies, for which they have been adopted.” He concludes that “… it has become a settled and wide-spread… practice, on the part of local party organizations, to prefer men to women when selecting a candidate, if there seems any hope of victory.” “Women and Parliamentary Elections,” British Journal of Sociology, 4, no 1 (1953), 23. In a similar vein, Ada Pritchard noted in a speech in the Ontario Legislative Assembly: “Quite frankly, what happens all too often is that normally when women are nominated they are in ridings which the party is willing to write off as a loss – without a chance of winning.” Legislature of Ontario, Debates Official Report, July 18, 1968, p. 5976.

37 Two neighbouring municipalities in Sør-Trøndelag, Ørland and Bjugn, provided dramatic evidence of the superior advantage that cumulation possesses over a separate women's list. The municipalities are the same size – about 2000 eligible voters – and their councils contained only one woman each during the 1967–71 period. In 1971, a women's list was submitted in Bjugn, but there was no agitation for cumulation. Only four or five women were elected (at the time of writing the results are not yet known). Ørland, on the other hand, witnessed an active cumulation campaign, and 10 of the 25 newly elected councillors are women. Arbeiderbladet, Sept. 23, 1971, p. 1.

38 Ibid., p. 2.

39 For a discussion of the increasingly important role of the candidate, see Means, “Norwegian Political Recruitment Patterns,” 72–5. See also the interview with Dr Valen, Henry, professor of political science at the University of Oslo, Dagbladet, Oct. 2, 1971, p. 2.Google Scholar

40 For a discussion of this point, see Skard, “Finnes en egen kvinnepolitikk.”

41 Milbrath, Political Participation, 115.

42 Cited in Det Norske Arbeiderpartis komite til å utrede spørsmålet om kvinnens stilling i samfunnet, Kvinnens plass er – hvor? (Oslo, 1965), 49.

43 Political Participation, 125.

44 Ibid.

45 “The Recruitment of Parliamentary Nominees,” 135.

46 “Citizen Participation in Political Life.”

47 Valen, Henry and Katz, Daniel, Political Parties in Norway (Oslo, 1967Google Scholar), chap. 9.

48 According to the 1957 election survey, 27 per cent of the men as against 12 per cent of the women were members of political parties. See Holter, Harriet, Sex Roles and Social Structure (Oslo, 1970), 106.Google Scholar

49 “Recruitment Patterns among Local Party Officials: A Model and Some Preliminary Findings in Selected Locales,” American Political Science Review, 60 (Sept. 1966), 676.

50 Milbrath, Political Participation, 101.

51 Robert Lane, for one, suggests that were more women approached by party leaders about joining up for active work there might in fact be less of an imbalance between the sexes in party work. Citing the results of an AIPO study which showed that approximately the same number of men and women were willing to engage in political volunteer work, Lane concludes that this suggests “… that some of the low participation is due to resistance of the party leaders; probably based upon the presumed lower effectiveness of women volunteers.” Political Life, 54.

52 The subject of drafting in Norwegian politics has not received particular attention. On the national level, there have been relatively few incidents of drafting; indeed, some insist that it does not occur, According to Valen, potential candidates for national office must have served political apprenticeship at the lower levels. See Valen and Katz, Political Parties, 57. Yet, recent years have seen so many exceptions to this rule that it must be qualified. In a Labour party report on the nomination system, it is noted that the opposition parties have resorted to drafting on several occasions: “… some of their most prominent leaders today were at the time of their first nomination hardly members of the parties which sent them to the Storting, but had through other means, such as speeches, articles, and writings, shown that they shared a particualr party's political views.” See Det Arbeiderparti, Norske, Nominasjonsordningen ved Stortingsvalgene (Oslo, 1966), 5.Google Scholar

Among the more famous of the draftees is Sjur Lindebrcekke, longtime chairman of the Conservative party. When nominated by the Bergen Conservatives in 1945, not only was Lindebroekke not a party member but he was popularly believed to be leaning towards the Liberal party, and that party's leadership had hoped to secure him as its nominee. Within the Liberal party, the election of Half dan Hegtun in 1965 was a notable example of drafting. A well-known writer, radio commentator, and television personality, Hegtun had no previous political experience when nominated by the Liberals in Akershus, a district in which they had been unable to secure representation for over twenty years. The Centre party also displays some notable examples of drafting; it is probably the only party to have recruited not only outside its own ranks, but inside the ranks of another party. This occurred in 1965, when the Troms Centre party nominated and elected to the Storting a man who was at that time serving as a Conservative municipal councillor.

In the cases where drafting has occurred, the parties have generally been unrepresented, or in fear of losing a seat unless they managed a “face-lift” and secured broader group appeal. For a discussion of drafting in Norwegian national politics, see Means, “Norwegian Political Recruitment Patterns,” 66–72.

53 Milbrath, Political Participation, 114.

54 Ibid., 89.

55 Ambition and Politics (Chicago, 1966), 10.

56 On this point, see Torgersen, Ulf, Norske Politiske Institusjoner (Oslo, 1968Google Scholar), sec. 4.6. According to Torgersen, a prospective politician cannot openly admit an ambition to political office. “The absence of personal and openly admitted ambition is quite obvious, the norm is modesty.” See also Eckstein, Harry, Division and Cohesion in Democracy: A Study of Norway (Princeton, 1966), 92–102Google Scholar

57 See Holter, Sex Roles and Social Structure, chap. 6.

58 “Great Britain,” in Patai, Raphael, ed., Women in the Modern World (New York, 1967), 486.Google Scholar

59 The recent sex role debate in Scandinavia has focused more and more on the dual roles of both men and women. Before women can assume a position of equality in the greater society a complete reallocation of roles and duties must occur within the family, it is argued by many of the contributors to the ongoing debate. See the essays in Dahlström, Edmund, ed., The Changing Roles of Men and Women (London, 1967Google Scholar), and Moberg, Eva, “Jämställdhet i valfrihet,” Diktning og Demokrati, special issue of Samtiden (1963), 94–104.Google Scholar