“Danish Women Put Up With Less”: Gender Equality and the Politics of Denial in Denmark

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelfagfællebedømt

Denmark is a country that has been heralded for its high levels of gender equality for decades. One would have expected, then, that the recent EU report that ranked Denmark as the EU-member country with the highest occurrence of physical violence towards women would have created a public uproar. Yet the few reactions to the study in the media were generally characterized by skepticism regarding the study’s comparative scope. The notion was widely circulated that Danish women experience behavior as “violent” that women in other countries would consider ordinary. It was argued that “Danish women put up with less”—and that the report was, in effect, invalid. In this article we outline the discursive space that emerges when the mass media seeks to tackle symptoms of inequality in Denmark. We argue that the ideology of gender equality comes to construct a dominant discourse, which silences symptoms of inequality. Thereby, gendered violence in Denmark is rendered invisible in public awareness.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftEuropean Journal of Women's Studies
Antal sider15
ISSN1350-5068
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2019

ID: 187552643