International or Transnational? Continuities or Ruptures? Introduction to the Special Issue on Nordic Women and the Transnational Networks during the Cold War

• In the field of women’s and gender history in the Nordic countries, this geographic region has served as an important contact point for scholars since the interest in women’s history awakened in the 1970s. The Nordic point of view was placed at the centre when the first biannual Nordic women’s history conference was organized in 1983. The exchange of ideas has flourished since then, following the research trends within the field in the Anglophone world (e.g. Blažević, 2015; Kurvinen & Matilainen, 2021).Despite the longstanding research networks on Nordic women’s and gender history, research has mostly been based on national case studies whereas comparative or border-crossing projects have been a rarity. This reflects the organization of historical research that necessitates archives as well as language and cultural knowledge to be performed. Nevertheless, national case studies have made an important contribution in increasing our knowledge of the variety of ways gender has affected the history of the Nordic countries. For example, previous scholarship has shown the differences in the history of Nordic women’s ways of organizing as well as their understandings of feminism, even though the Nordic countries—as a single entity—are often portrayed, in popular speech, as the leaders of gender equality in the world.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Historia (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History (hsv//eng)

Keyword

historia

History

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

art (subject category)