The Year of Living Danishly (14 page)

‘So when did this place shut down?'

‘Oh, in the 1960s.'

I'm shocked. I know this sort of thing isn't exclusive to Denmark. London's Magdalene Asylum was active until 1966 and the last Irish Magdalene laundry didn't close until the 1990s.
But in Denmark?
I'd assumed that the Danes had evolved sooner – that things were a little more equal here. I realise that I don't know as much as I thought I did about what it is to be a woman in Denmark.

The partying goes on until the sun finally sets at 11pm and the moon appears, shining so brightly that it feels like midday. We walk up the hill to our house soon after and I look down at the remains of the bonfire, glowing and joining up with dozens of others smouldering away up and down the coastline, like a string of pearls.

That night, I'm plagued by dreams of semi-charred women on flaming tinder, weaving their way to Germany before being woken at 3am by a slice of sun that's made it past the outer edge of our blackout blind and is now scalding my retinas. Midsummer, Danish-style, means a mere four hours of darkness a day, and while the long summer evenings have been most welcome, I could do without the early wakeup call complete with dawn chorus.

Squinting and cursing, I scrabble around on my bedside table for the free aeroplane eye mask I've taken to wearing in the early hours. I put it on, flump back down onto my pillow and attempt to drift off again, but by now my brain's kicked into gear and instead of dozing off, I lie there fretting. About all sorts of things. I'm good at this.

Why do birds get up at dawn, and doesn't it mean they're knackered by sunset in summer in Denmark? I wonder where the best place to buy bras is round here? Who first decided waxing was a good idea? When did women even get the vote in Denmark?
And finally, the biggie:
What if it's no better to be born female in the famously progressive Scandinavia than it is anywhere else?
Realising I don't have the answers to any of these questions, I make a plan to find out.
*

Aarhus, Denmark's second city, is home to one of the world's few women's history museums. Although not quite up there with the Smithsonian, it boasts an interesting assortment of artefacts and archive material charting the lives of those born with the double-x chromosome over the years. On the muggy Monday morning, I chug up to The Big City in my non-air-conditioned red mobility tomato in the hope of reassuring myself about the fate of womankind in Denmark. A helpful lady in horn-rimmed spectacles joins me for a turn around the museum's dusty collection and gives me a quick oral history of Nordic woman. I learn that women were allowed into universities in Denmark in 1875 and that the Scandinavian countries were early starters in universal women's suffrage, with Finland kicking things off in 1906, followed by Norway in 1913, Denmark and Iceland in 1915, and Sweden in 1919. In Denmark, Sweden and Norway political parties introduced voluntary gender quotas in the 1970s, encouraging so many women to enter politics that the quota has since been abandoned in Denmark as no further stimulus is thought to be required. At the time of writing, women make up 40 per cent of Danish parliament as well as leading both coalition parties. I learn, too, that the Danes have always been pretty progressive on women's rights, with abortion legalised in 1973 and equal pay becoming law in 1976. As I discovered back in February, Danish employment policies place a strong emphasis on making work accessible for all and include generous parental leave.

Families get a whopping 52 weeks off to share between them for a new baby in Denmark. Mothers must take four of these before the birth and at least fourteen weeks after. This seems eminently sensible since a decent amount of maternity leave has been linked to healthier children and lower rates of maternal depression, according to research from the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US. Men take the first fortnight off too and then the rest of the leave is divided between parents as they see fit. Because most men take paternity leave in Denmark, they bond with their children more quickly and learn how to do all the parenting jobs that mothers have traditionally taken care of.

The next step is more mandatory paternity leave. Norway was the first country to establish a paternity leave quota for fathers in 1993. Before that, only 2–3 per cent of Norwegian fathers took any time off. Today, Norwegian fathers are given fourteen weeks of leave and 90 per cent of dads use it, with 15 per cent choosing to work a shorter working week after this to spend more time with their family. Studies show that increased paternity leave in Norway has made a real difference to attitudes to gender roles, with boys born after 1993 doing more housework than those born previously. In Sweden, fathers take two months of paternity leave, paid at 80 per cent of their usual salary.

If we were ever able to start a family,
I can't help thinking,
Scandinavia would be a bloody good place to do it…

There's also a family allowance from the state, paid directly to any mother with children below eighteen, regardless of income, as well as child benefits awarded to single parents and the children of widows or widowers.

Once they've had children, 78 per cent of Danish mothers return to work – far higher than the OECD average of 66 per cent. This is because childcare is subsidised by the government and the famed work-life balance of Danish workplaces makes it easier to balance career and family life here than it would be elsewhere. What has traditionally been defined as ‘women's work' is valued as highly as traditionally defined ‘men's work' here – and both sexes do a bit of each.

Being out and about during the day (the happy lot of the freelancer) is always an interesting exercise in anthropology, and in Denmark I notice more men around than I did back home. This is not because I'm specifically looking for them, you understand, but because they're just
there
, usually with a small person attached to them. There are dads wheeling around buggies in the middle of the day, pushing kids on swings, waiting to pick up their offspring from childcare at 3.30 in the afternoon or racing around the supermarket with a head of lettuce in one hand and a toddler in the other. Men doing just the sort of parental chores that you see women or put-upon grandparents doing for the most part back at home. And this seems like a Very Good Thing. Studies from the OECD confirm that Scandinavian men are more involved in childcare than ever before and do a higher proportion of domestic work than their British counterparts. So I'm delighted to discover research from the University of Missouri showing that men and women are happier when they share household and child-rearing responsibilities. I make a mental note to send this to all my mum friends, with a suggestion to print it out and pin it to the fridge.

As well as doting dads, I check out the shops in Aarhus. For research purposes, obviously. The women's fashion on show is fairly homogenous, coloured strictly between the lines of Scandi chic and all looking a little on the flammable side. But it's not, I'm interested to note, overtly sexual, or in a size zero. The women I see around me aren't stick-thin. Instead, they're strong-looking. Vikings, in fact. In my local bakery (aka my second home) a rare American tourist passing through recently told the girl behind the counter: ‘You look like a Viking woman!' OK, so it was slightly creepy, but if anyone had said that to me back in England, I'd have thought they were calling me stocky.
Manly
, even. And that would have been seen as A Bad Thing. But here, the girl looked genuinely pleased and thanked him for the ‘compliment'. Being seen as a strong woman in Denmark is an accolade. Even in the fashion-conscious capital, Copenhagen, I haven't observed anyone rocking the bow-legged, heroin-chic look I became accustomed to in London, nor the bony, over-Pilated physique of New Yorkers. Being too thin isn't seen as particularly desirable here. Women eat.

I pass children looking almost indistinguishable by gender, free from colour-coded clothing. I'm reminded that the latest catalogue from the country's biggest chain of toy shops, BR, made a refreshing break from convention by showing boys playing with Barbie dolls and girls playing with trains on the front cover. Kids are allowed to choose for themselves here, regardless of their sex.

Feeling reassured that Denmark is an OK place to be a woman, but keen to find out more, I canvas Helena C and American Mom for their views over coffee (and a
snegle
, naturally) the following day. I mentally prepare to bask in a warm bath of pro-sisterhood sharing about my new spiritual homeland, and things begin positively enough. American Mom commends the opportunities for women in Denmark who want kids as well as a career, telling me that when she had her first child in the US she was considered ‘extremely lucky' to get three months off work, unpaid. ‘Having my second in Denmark was a dream by comparison,' she says. ‘I had a year off and I got a promotion at work at the same time.'

Helena C tells me that girls and boys are treated pretty equally and offered the same opportunities at school, and American Mom agrees that ‘you don't get too many girly girls here. “
Jeg kan gøre det selv
”, or, “I can do it myself” is something they learn from the age they can talk in Denmark.' I'm impressed. But then, things take a turn for the less fabulous.

‘So yeah, it's pretty good for mothers and kids, but you should hear some of the jokes that go around about women – in my office at least,' says American Mom.

‘Such as?'

‘Where to start?' is her reply. ‘Yesterday a guy in my department made a “joke” about women drivers in this big external presentation. That kind of talk would never be allowed in most workplaces in the US. OK, so in America, women still don't get
paid
as much as men for doing the same job. Here, you can pretty much be sure that if you have the same job title as someone of the opposite sex, you'll both be paid the same. But it's as though the Danes think, “Well, we've got the big stuff figured out, so what's a little joke?”'

Helena C agrees with this evaluation of her countryfolk and tells me about a TV show on the Danish version of the BBC where women stand silently naked in front of fully clothed men who verbally dissect their bodies. ‘They talk about everything from these women's pubic hair to their caesarean scars,' she tells me.

‘Nice.'

The show's host is Thomas Blachman (also a judge on the Danish version of
The X Factor
), who justified his ‘naked lady show' to Danish press at the time as a cultural service to get ‘men discussing the aesthetics of a female body without allowing the conversation to become pornographic or politically correct'. Presumably, because most women have never been fortunate enough to have their appearance critiqued by strange men before … oh no, wait, my mistake…

On the topic of objectification, American Mom tells me she was accosted by teenage girls in their pants putting on a pole dancing display in The Big Town last weekend in preparation for the national championship. ‘They were handing out fliers saying, “
Families with kids, old, young, couples and singles – all are welcome!
”' – all the while writhing around like strippers!'

They've also heard reports that employers still discriminate against mothers and mothers-to-be in interviews in Denmark. It's not unusual for interviewers here to ask a candidate's age, marital status, and whether or they have children – or plan to. The Equal Treatment Act states that there should be no discrimination based on sex, especially around pregnancy and family status, and if a job applicant or employee feels they've been treated unfairly, it's up to the employer to prove that no discrimination took place. But a few trade unions I call up for a UK newspaper feature tell me that Danish women who are pregnant or on maternity leave have regularly been let go by employers, with some even refused jobs on the off-chance that they
might
become mothers in future. In 2012, one in eight newly qualified nurses were asked at interview if they had, or planned to have, children, according to the nurses' union
Dansk Sygeplejeråd
. One was told: ‘We can't hire you if you will soon be on maternity leave.' The union for retail and office workers reported that 17 per cent of its members have been questioned about baby plans in job interviews and for lawyers, the picture's bleaker still, with 20 per cent of women saying that their careers have suffered setbacks because of children. Some unions even reported employers ‘letting go' women undergoing IVF.

I'm beginning to appreciate that all is not necessarily rosy in my Scandinavian idyll, and decide to recruit some experts to help me get to grips with the state of equality in Denmark. First up, is Sanne Søndergaard, one of Denmark's biggest comedians and an out-and-proud feminist.

‘Most Danes feel lucky to have been born here and women in Denmark don't have to compromise as much as they do in other places in the world, like the US or the UK,' says Sanne when we meet for coffee and a setting-the-world-to-rights session. ‘But it's not perfect. We don't talk about sexism much in Denmark but there is a sexist culture. We need to acknowledge this and bear it in mind, otherwise we just reproduce it – men
and
women.'

I mention pole dancing-gate and she tells me about the plastic surgery ads she's been spotting on buses in Copenhagen: ‘These things just drive around all day long with totally naked, two-metre-high breasts on them, encouraging Danish women to “
get new boobs!
” My nine-year-old neighbour said to me the other day that she wished she was a boy so she wouldn't “have to get new breasts all the time”. That's the message she and her friends have picked up from these ads everywhere – that to be a woman you need enormous yet perky fake breasts. That's so sad!' A few things like this have been creeping into liberal Danish culture over the past few years, Sanne tells me. ‘It's as though people here
assume
that we're equal so they can be as sexist as they want. Because Denmark was first with a lot of equality issues, like gay rights and abortion laws, I think we're also getting the backlash first.'