The Committee for Mainstreaming - Women in Science has looked at the need for a collaborative effort to build networks for female scientists in Norway. The pilot project found that there was an interest in strengthening and co-ordinating the networks.

Shaking buttocks, homophobic hip-hoppers, pimped-up lady singers and hypermacho cock rock... The world of music videos is abundant with clichés regarding gender, race, class and sexuality. But according to musicologist Marita Buanes, there are exceptions that challenge this.

In this article Jone Salomonsen explores the darker side of religion from the perspective of the Knutby case in Sweden, a Californian case where a father sacrificed his daughter, and a case from London - where an 8 year old girl died after extensive abuse from relatives who believed the child to be possessed by evil spirits. What does it mean to kill someone out of love of God, or obedience to the Spirit in a Pentecostal setting?

Amidst tough competition, a team of Norwegian gender researchers received NOK 32 million ($4.7 million) from the European Union. They will research how the modern women's movement has contributed, challenged and altered how women and men participate in society.

Previously Unni Wikan has been interested in immigrant women and children. She now wants us to be more concerned with the men. Better insights into the mens’ situations could prevent conflicts, says the anthropologist, who is working on the analysis of two court cases to do with honour killing and forced marriage. – I am sitting on top of a goldmine of ethnographic material that illustrates cultural complexity in a whole new way, she says.

For her doctorate thesis in Law, published in 1998, Anne Hellum carried out fieldwork in Zimbabwe. She investigated the potential of the UN Convention on the Eliminiation of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in Zimbabwe: How is the Women’s Convention harmonized with African customs and practices and with women’s individual needs? In a new project she is going to look at Norwegian law in relation to different groups’ interpretations of the law, especially where religion, gender and law intersect. A central question is: How can we secure people with different religious and cultural backgrounds the same legal status as Norwegian citizens, something we are obliged to do in accordance with human rights?

The article’s theme is Jesus’ role in the construction of gender in Christian theology. Feminists have criticised male theologians for portraying Jesus as a model for “human" existence in purely masculine terms. This criticism is expanded upon from a queer perspective on Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:12, about Eunuchs as ideals in “the Kingdom of Heaven", in a reading inspired by Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble. From such a reading “eunuchs", who represent a doubtful masculinity, are presented as a challenge to the masculine hegemony. “Eunuchs" can therefore be gainfully employed as an example of the possibility for identities that lend themselves to breaking down the traditional categories of gender.

Do not underestimate free will and do not trivialize coercion! This is the conclusion in Anja Bredal’s doctoral thesis on arranged marriage. After ten years of research, one doctorate and several journal and newspaper articles this sociologist is still interested in the topic. She wonders about one thing in particular: How is it possible to maintain a nuanced moderate position and yet still be interesting?

What is the relationship between ethnic Norwegian feminists and non-ethnic Norwegian feminists or immigrant women? Interview with Beatrice Halsaa, professor at the Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research, University of Oslo.

To comply with international human rights standards, many African governments are gradually replacing their gender-specific and family-based customary and religious laws with new legislation molded on an individualistic, equal-status ideal. Judicial reforms and legal outreach programs that set out to make the new law accessible to local communities have been launched.

Cervical cancer is the most prevalent cancer and the leading cause of death from cancers among women in sub-Saharan Africa.

Constructing nations and nation states is also about creating concepts of gender-linked behaviour. The duties and rights individuals have within the nations’ framework are related to the cultural formation of a gendered national symbolism. Clothing such as national costumes are symbols that express a nation’s character. Based on an analysis of Norway and Iceland, Ida Blom discusses how the meaning of gender and class are contained in national symbolism.

In studies of globalization, the point of view is generally "global" as well, meaning that one searches for a global overview, or outlook, which is situated at no specific place. The present paper requests a shift of focus arguing that to understand what is global you have to start with the local. The experiences of the global take place in particular local places, and to study such processes of change we need to situate our study in such a way that we can study the relationships between the local and the global.

In 1904 a Muganda Chief described the lack of a Christian boarding school for girls as ‘the Muganda’s broken arm’, since boy’s education was already established. As a response, the Ladies’ Conference of the Church Missionary Society recommended that such a school should be built at Gayaza. The school opened in 1905 and the first Headmistress Miss Alfreda Allen wrote, 'My conviction is that we ought to give these people, who are so eager and enthusiastic to learn, the best we can.' By then Bishop Tucker had opened the school hall with the following message to the audience that included the Katikiro and many chiefs: ‘There must be noble women in order to have noble men.’ The first aim of Gayaza was to train Christian wives and mothers and to bridge the intellectual gap between husbands and wives. And when the time came for His Highness the Kabaka to marry, it was to Gayaza that His Highness looked for a bride.

This article presents evidence of direct links between the women’s missionary movement and the feminist movement in early twentieth-century Norway. Contemporary scholars disagree on whether women in the missionary movement were supporting and promoting feminist ideas at the time. That the effects of the women’s missionary movement included the expansion of women’s spheres of action, and the changing of cultural assumptions about what women can accomplish, is not so much disputed. More controversial is the question of whether missionary women had feminist views and thereby represented a specific type of feminism. The debate on missionary women’s links to feminism must be informed by careful case-studies of the mission organizations that women were involved in.

This summary article is based on Kari Elisabeth Børresens'  research, undertaken since 1961, concerning formative Christian anthropology. Conflicts between normative religion and women’s rights are already well analysed concerning Islam, but rather unexplored concerning traditional Christianity. Here the case of Roman Catholicism is highly significant, since the Catholic Church is, according to 2001 Vatican statistics, the world’s largest branch of Christianity, comprising 17.3 % of the global population or 1.050 billion human beings.