Concerns about the dismantling of the Nordic Gender Institute (NIKK)

An all too sudden death. Nordic Gender Institute (NIKK) will be dismantled before the end of 2011

We are sad and worried to announce that NIKK, the Nordic Gender Institute, is going to be dismantled before December 31st 2011. Since 1995, NIKK has been an important professional organization in the field of Nordic, European and international gender studies. Through its active collaboration with gender scholars, equality policy-makers, and information- and documentation centres, NIKK has functioned as a role model and an important partner in bridging academia and equality policy in the area of gender politics and gender equality. As an institutional partner, NIKK has been very reliable and active in ATGENDER and its predecessors. NIKK has had an important role in research cooperation and dissemination, not only for the development of gender scholarship in the Nordic countries, but also in Europe. We want to thank NIKK for the good collaboration over the years, and for its important work with supporting and strengthening research, information and documentation in the field of gender and equality. We thank the Nordic Council of Ministers for making it financially possible.

We also want to express our concerns. The Nordic Council of Ministers has decided that some of NIKK’s functions will be continued in another Nordic collaborative body. Yet, the decisions as to where, when, how, and by which resources this will happen are still to be taken. We are worried that important experience, knowledge and continuity in gender and equality issues will be lost through the discharge of the personnel and the infrastructures developed at NIKK. We are also worried that this decision involves a downgrading of the centrality for research- and university related activities in the field, and that the resources allocated to research and universities might decrease or disappear.

To our regrets, ATGENDER cannot take any action to intervene into the decision-making process since this information reached us when the decision already had been taken, but it is a decision we meet with deep worries and sadness, which we have explained in a letter from the ATGENDER board to the Nordic Council of Ministers. In times of increased political and financial insecurity all over Europe, the decision to dismantle the Nordic Gender Institute also signals a warning to all European gender and equality units, and highlights the continued and increased importance of organized collaboration across Europe.

The ATGENDER board, through Mia Liinason, assistant professor, Centre for Gender Studies, Lund University, Sweden, member of the ATGENDER board.