said, of Bhaskar's transcendental realism. Although much of the empirical material Hull is referring to -from Foucault and Butler -on sexuality, madness and punishment, for example, is social, Hull does not refer to the realist theoretical literature on the social realm. Durkheim, for example, was adamant that social facts are real entities existing in the real social world, external to the individual and exerting a causal effect on him or her. He argued that when we perform our duties as a brother, a husband, a citizen, for example, we carry out commitments we have entered into and which are defined by law and custom. These things are intrinsically social and are different from individual acts. They are general throughout society; external to the individual and constraining. He believes, indeed, that individual actions derive from society.

This could be argued to be a form of realism. Indeed, there are examples from Bhaskar himself that Hull could have referred to. But most of Hull's examples, in her sections of the book on realism, are taken from the natural sciences. This is especially unfortunate, given that some realists in the social sciences would like to challenge the assumption that there is a hierarchy of sciences, with physics at its root. Some would wish, and not in an anti-realist fashion, to assert the position of the social world as sui generis.

Overall, then there is much in this book that will be of interest to many different people. However, I doubt that it will convince those who are not already followers of critical realism.

Alison Assiter

University of the West of England

NURTURING WHITE IDENTITIES DOI: 10.1177/1350506806068671 Bridget Byrne White Lives: The Interplay of 'Race ', Class and Gender in Everyday Life London: Routledge, 2006, 200 pp., ISBN 0-4153-4711-4 (hbk), 0-4153-4712-2 (pbk) Bridget Byrne's qualitative analysis of white London mothers' discourse represents a major step towards establishing whiteness as a serious paradigm in British sociology. Not only is this an empirical monograph problematizing the racialization of white identities, but one that does so by focusing on the experiences of mothers, thus beginning to fill another hole in the literature. Byrne's work addresses key themes raised in fieldwork in Britain, and highlights methodological issues pertinent to all researchers interviewing people about 'race'.

Byrne opens with an epistemological discussion outlining the background of studies of whiteness: 'the assumption often is that we (everyday white people in Britain who are not particularly racist) cannot be interesting as "race" has nothing to do with us' (p. 1). Indeed, her project involves analysing how the 'we' she refers to is constructed, a project requiring 'hearing and seeing "race" in contexts where it is not explicitly felt as present ' (p. 2).

This elusive quality of whiteness generates particular methodological problems illuminated here. In an engrossing section on narrative methods, she demonstrates how telling life stories can enable some respondents, but prohibit others from making themselves subjects: building a story around turning points requires seeing one's life in a particularly coherent way in which the self is attributed a degree of agency that not everyone exhibits. There are specific ethical issues too (pp. 36-9). Aside from the usual assumptions about class and sexuality made by researcher and researched, a problem lies with the interpretation of the data produced. Byrne admits that whiteness might not be a topic with which the respondents have much sympathy. They may disagree with her interpretation and feel attacked. Byrne's strategy in analysis is to try to 'be sensitive to the complexities of what the interviewees say and how they say it', a tactic that leads to 'careful and sometimes painful' work (p. 38).

The key findings appear in Chapters 5 and 6. Byrne argues that 'race' needs to be understood as performative, and 'more specifically as a product of perceptual practices' (p. 74). She observes that questions about 'race' in her interviews were frequently met with a lowering of the speaker's voice. There were evasions (talking about other identities when asked about 'race'), and silences: talking about 'race' is awkward. Indeed, a common strategy deployed was not to see difference, i.e. to talk as if whiteness is not a social location. Yet in not seeing their whiteness, the women definitely see blackness. Black men, for example, emerge as simultaneously threatening and desirable. In narrating themselves, Byrne's white women subjects often evoke whiteness as an absence of 'race' during provincial, often rural, childhoods, followed by an awareness-raising confrontation in the cosmopolitan metropolis. For them, 'race' is something seen and done only when face-to-face with the 'Other'.

The chapter on socializing around schools is the strongest. At the 'core of motherhood', writes Byrne, 'lie the intersections of race, class and gender' (p. 106). She proceeds to demonstrate this in her examination of the ways in which the social networks of both mothers and children, and the choice of schools, are highly classed and raced acts. While there are obvious cultural and material conflicts over resources, what is fascinating is the view of multiculturalism as a form of cultural capital.

Many of the mothers are pro-multicultural: exposure to difference is deemed good for the children. Yet there is what François Mitterand once termed a 'threshold of tolerance'. There has to be the 'right mix', which involves enough minority (and/or working-class) children to make it interesting, but not so many as to degrade the school (even if the English Office for Standards in Education reports adequate educational standards based on its school inspection). Byrne's conclusion is that in the eyes of their mothers, children must learn to be white and middle class in the right way. Her emphasis on performativity leads her to state that: 'the security and stability of the white middle-class norm requires constant repetition and recitation in order for it to be ensured for their children' (p. 137). The mothers thus nurture their children's whiteness.

The final chapter, on belonging and Englishness, strikes me as being located slightly uncomfortably in this narrative. We have moved from life histories to the micro-management of school choices and friendship circles, and this section returns us to the macro level. I wonder if this would have been better inserted at the beginning, or as a separate project. However, this is a minor quibble. There is also a reference to a black interviewee, Dawn, who plays no other part in the project. What is Dawn's relationship to the project and why are we not told anything about her (or about Hope, who appears in Chapter 2)? This anomaly aside, there are interesting elements to this discussion. Britishness is located ambivalently vis-a-vis Englishness, and the subjects have quite differently experienced and class-based relationships to nationality. Byrne maintains that these narratives reveal a discrepancy between imagined white, middle-class, rural, clean Englishness and the reality of multicultural London: 'there is an inflexibility in the formal narration of Englishness', she argues, 'which made it impossible to sustain in the everyday' (p. 166). One interviewee even recounts trying to evade Britishness while in Libya in the period after the 1986 bombings. Instead, the respondents embrace relatively local forms of identification, despite a range of emotional investments in the areas in which they live.

The conclusion deals with the justification of whiteness as a framework. Byrne cites the unsettlement generated by the Parekh Report, for 'those who have occupied normative subject positions' faced with having those positions 'questioned and challenged' (p. 169). Her rationale (pp. 174-5) makes no claim for the whiteness paradigm outside the social sciences' examination of racism, and underscores the enterprise of marking white as a privileged, racialized social location.

There are a number of interesting points arising here. The interviews were carried out in 1997-8, so eight years have elapsed: and not just average years. We are now post both the USA attacks of 9/11 and the London bombings of 7 July 2005, and there is blanket coverage of asylum and immigration issues. As I write this, a British home secretary has just been sacked over a related problem. It is certain that carrying out similar interviews now would produce qualitatively different responses. So the whole book is caught in a curious predicament, somehow both intensely current and lying on the other side of profound historical fault lines.

Second, the more studies of white identities I read, the more I am convinced that 'whiteness' is also an analytical framework in itself (and maybe 'for itself'). People engaged in such work share a particular view of the world that discounts purely positivist understandings of social science research. Among researchers this is not often a problem, but when the material is presented to non-adherents, the responses may be uncomprehending and defensive, as they were when Byrne was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 programme Thinking Allowed in March 2006. Academics in the field share an understanding that all the findings to do with boundary-construction, loss, cultural capital, the intricate interplay between structure and agency, etc. are constitutive of racialized identities, because of our readings of other work in the field, and our own experiences. For me, addressing whiteness has made visible parallel gulfs between how different researchers understand data, and between how researchers and the public do so. As Byrne points out, the marking of white identities is particularly unsettling for people who are deeply invested in an unchallenged social location. There may therefore be a revealing connection between the nascent project of Britishness (as Byrne hints) and the increasing reflexivity around white identities, such as the prevalent and widely held belief that the white English are unfairly hemmed in by the parameters of political correctness.

Third, the effort to mark whiteness as visible, which in this case is mission accomplished, illuminates the central paradox facing those of us engaged in this field. Whiteness is only invisible and unmarked to white people, so from the standpoint of critics such as Barbara Fields and Sara Ahmed, while the white 'we' are puffing and panting up the hill of revelation, people who are not racialized as white live their whole lives at its peak. So what is the point? The first is that the 'race'-class-gender triad developed in the 'intersectionality' paradigm by academics such as Hill-Collins, Crenshaw, Yuval-Davis, Brah and Phoenix has been touched on infrequently in the British context. The work here is an empirical foundation stone. Second, Byrne makes no claim to a place in the pantheon of 'white studies', and wisely counsels against the constitution of such a subdiscipline, regarding its pursuit as potentially closing off discussion of racism. This epistemological and political edginess and ambivalence emerges strongly from Byrne's reference to the principles of sharing research with respondents. How do you do this appropriately when working on how people are embedded in racist discourse and practice, without locating yourself as some kind of judge? As a white researcher of whiteness, you know that you are also implicated in this racialization process. Bridget Byrne's book succeeds in raising questions that contribute both to research agendas on contemporary social identities, and to making the reader reflect on the substantive issues of complicity in broader political change. Hopefully her next set of findings will be published more rapidly than these. Within a period of three decades sexual harassment has evolved from a new concept to a multi-level policy field. Zippel's readable and detailed study traces how the issue of sexual harassment has been taken up by different political actors and resulted in a number of new regulations, institutional arrangements and provisions. Her comparison of policy change in three different contexts provides an excellent insight into how different institutional arrangements shape these struggles and outcomes. Zippel's study seeks to explain the very different ways states have responded to problems of sexual harassment. The three cases examined in the book show important differences in timing of, and in pathways to, legal reform. Although feminist activists, femocrats, experts and politicians in different contexts have been successful in promoting feminist frames of sexual harassment and effecting policy change, the outcomes have been different and it remains difficult to decide which path has most improved women's working position in relation to sexual harassment: regulation of working conditions or legal arms to redress offences.

Steve Garner

Zippel compares three different cases: the US, the EU and Germany, each with a very different route to policy change, and hence, different outcomes.

The US legal-liberal path is characterized by Zippel as a revolution in judiciary that resulted in a feminist definition of law. Sexual harassment is defined as one form of sex discrimination and courts have accepted a definition of sexual harassment from the victim's perspective as unwanted sexual behaviour. In the US, the development of laws against sexual harassment happened in court rooms, by judges, not by lawmakers. As early as 1976, in the Williams v. Saxbe trial, a US court accepted sexual harassment as sex discrimination. The anti-discrimination law of 1964 provided a strong basis to build on.

The role of the women's movement in the US case can be labelled ambiguous. They have been important pioneers on the issue, yet feminist organizing has not been particularly strong and mainly took place at an early stage. Working Women


POSTCOLONIAL WORLDS APART Sandra Ponzanesi

Paradoxes of Postcolonial Culture: Contemporary Women Writers of the Indian and Afro-Italian Diaspora Albany: SUNY Press, 2004, 264 pp., ISBN 0791462013 There is no doubt that the publishing world is dominated by Anglo-American researchers in every field of enquiry, including women's studies, cultural studies and sociology. A survey in 2002 of qualitative methodology textbooks published by Sage indicates that 'English-speaking countries held 91 per cent of the "market", and the United States and United Kingdom alone had an 80 per cent market share' (Alasuutari, 2004: 597). This unequal concentration impacts upon the type of research reported, the nationalities of writers published, and ultimately the culture, language and politics that count as 'international'. Writers who use the English language as a medium of communication enjoy many more publishing opportunities than do writers using 'minority' languages.

In Paradoxes of Postcolonial Culture, Ponzanesi compares female Anglo-Indian writers to Afro-Italian writers. The central argument is simple: colonialist legacies are ongoing and by examining the postcolonial publishing world, Ponzanesi demonstrates that inequalities are perpetuated by global linguistic hierarchies. Although the Afro-Italian and Anglo-Indian writers examined here all migrated to the first world from third world countries, their works are differentially positioned because of inequalities between the empowering language (English) and a minor one (Italian). Ponzanesi argues that novelists writing in English 'can rely on a broad network and on a vast readership, whereas Afro-Italian writers risk being doubly erased by colonial policy and by neocolonial powers that privilege English in the new global economic transactions' (p. 12). She elaborates, noting that: . . . the literatures expressed in English grant themselves the privilege of attracting wider interest, a global readership, and the support of international publishing houses located in strategic cosmopolitan centers such as London, New York, New Delhi, and Toronto. These possibilities go hand in hand with the garnering of flashy international literary prizes (such as the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Commonwealth Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and Neustadt Prize for Literature) and the corresponding media coverage and critical reviews. (p. 14) Though postcolonial literature has received much more feminist attention of late [START_REF] Hussain | Writing Diaspora: South Asian Women, Culture and Ethnicity[END_REF][START_REF] Silva | The Gendered Nation: Contemporary Writings from South Asia[END_REF], Paradoxes of Postcolonial Culture is unique because, as Ponzanesi correctly points out, global linguistic hierarchies have largely been absent from analyses of diasporic Anglo-American literature. The emphasis on fragmentation, varying historical legacies and unequal linguistic hierarchies serves to challenge the monolithic nature of the postcolonial debate.

Each chapter in the book focuses on a particular theoretical issue, but as a whole brings together themes of gender, ethnicity and migration. Each chapter can be read alone or as part of the larger monograph. There are two sections to the monograph. The first part analyses Indian novels; it consists of four chapters and analyses Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, Meena Alexander's Fault Lines, Meatless Days by Sara Suleri and finally Sunetra Gupta's Moonlight into Marzipan. The second part of the book centres on Afro-Italian literature, including works by Erminia dell'Oro and Maria Abbebu Viarengo, Ribka Sibhatu's Aulo: Canto-Poesia dall'Eritrea, and finally Sette Gocce di Sangue by Sirad S. Hassan.

The book is useful for a broad audience; the details of Italian colonialism are perhaps not so widely known (at least among Anglo-American theorists). In 'A Short Story about the Italian Empire' (Chapter 6), Ponzanesi discusses the history of Italian imperialism and the time after independence, paying attention to representations of female Italians and Africans. In order to understand current migration patterns and multiculturalism in contemporary European society, Ponzanesi argues that it is necessary to explore the varying colonial policies adopted by the British, French and Italians. In addition, this monograph contains some key references for those interested in reading more works by Afro-Italian and Anglo-Indian writers.

The central problem I have with this text is that in analysing postcolonial inequalities it seems to prioritize divisions of language and nationhood. Most people would agree that a host of advantages arise for novelists writing in English as a second language, and further, that native English speakers are privileged in a plethora of ways. However, the arguments posed in Paradoxes of Postcolonial Culture are based on the life chances of an incredibly small and elite group of writers who have opportunities to travel the world, publish best sellers and enjoy prominent international careers. The Afro-Italian writers as well as the Anglo-Indians are clearly middle and upper class. But how does the global linguistic hierarchy affect working-class people? There is virtually no attention paid to social class inequalities, both within and between countries in this analysis. For instance, what role do social networks play in the route towards international stardom? In part I would have been interested in reading more about the link between these novels and the everyday lives of migrant, minority and diasporic women in contemporary Europe. Though the monograph refers briefly to accent and dialect hierarchies within the English language, it is assumed that all British people, regardless of class and race/ ethnicity, benefit from speaking English. Recent empirical research by feminist sociologists in the UK suggests this is not the case (Mahony and Zmroczek, 1997;[START_REF] Mcdermott | Telling Lesbian Stories: Interviewing and the Class Dynamics of "Talk[END_REF].

Despite these small concerns, Paradoxes of Postcolonial Culture is a lively, enjoyable and absorbing account of linguistic hierarchies operating in the global world. It offers a unique argument to the postcolonial debate and is especially interesting for those unfamiliar with Italian colonial history. I would recommend this as an essential piece of reading for students and researchers working on literary studies, migration, globalization and gender.


Toine Lagro-Janssen

Developments in Research

Keywords:

The feminist movement was from its start in the 19th century involved in the struggle for better health care for women. The first feminists aimed at better information on birth control and sexuality. The second feminist wave focused on the unequal division of power roles between men and women. A lot of the problems women experienced could be seen as a consequence of their subordinate role in society. At the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s, the discipline women and health or women and medicine was developed. In this introduction to the theme, the developments in this discipline are described. The starting points of the new discipline followed the principles of 'women's health care'. These principles can be summarized as the emphasis on control and autonomy by the patient, demedicalization, the importance of the psychosocial context of complaints, empowerment of women and good information and communication. The central issue of the article is: what is the actual scientific state of the art and what important changes have been made on the subject gender and health? The article ends with ideas for future research.

INTRODUCTION

Right from the very start of the women's liberation movement, efforts to achieve better health for women and better access to health care have formed important goals. Justly so, because pregnancy and childbirth held a high risk of mortality, a risk that still applies in the same magnitude to women in the developing countries.

Aletta Jacobs, the first woman to become a doctor in the Netherlands in the late 19th century, emphasized the importance of effective and safe contraception for women. She subsequently introduced and distributed the contraceptive pessary to Dutch women. Her attention focused on issues to improve health in relation to reproduction and sexuality, such as the dangers of venereal diseases, the trade in women and girls and the abysmal living and working conditions of prostitutes.

The second women's liberation movement took place at the end of the 1960s and was chiefly characterized by protests against the existing division of roles between men and women -women had the inferior role. Women's dissatisfaction and complaints should not be perceived as personal shortcomings, but as a result of the social injustice between men and women. Problems that arose from the weak position of women in society, such as the housewife syndrome, domestic violence and sexual abuse, drew increasing attention.

Another important theme in women's liberation was the right of selfdetermination, i.e. the right to choose to have an abortion. The perception of wrongful medical interference with the female body formed a central issue. This theme later expanded within health care into the notion of autonomy, authority over one's own life, issues that were also valid and particularly important at times when decisions had to be made about illness and health.

In the practice of health care in the same period, people felt ill informed about diseases in women and an urgent need arose for knowledge with a solid scientific foundation. Thus, at the end of the 1980s, a new scientific discipline was formed at universities under the heading of Women and Health, or Women's Health Studies.

In an earlier study, I described the development of women's health studies from this historical perspective and put forward a number of important starting points for further research (Lagro-Janssen, 1999):

• Gender blindness within medical science had resulted in a genderspecific lack of insight, because most of the existing knowledge about illness and health was based on the male figure as prototype for the human body; • The operative concept of illness needed to be redefined as a biomedical concept that acquires meaning in the context of individual lives and social circumstances; • Women's own perceptions and observations must receive greater incorporation into research.

These starting points largely conform with the principles of women's health care practice and can be summarized as the importance of authority and autonomy of the patient; demedicalization; incorporation of the psychosocial context into the complaint; standing up for one's own opinions and strengths; and laying emphasis on good information and patient education (Lagro-Janssen and [START_REF] Lagro-Janssen | Sekseverschillen in ziekte en gezondheid[END_REF].

The question arises as to whether the aforementioned starting points have indeed been put into effect in research, or whether other developments have led to alternative paradigms. These points led to the formulation of the central question in this article: What is the present scientific status in the field of gender and health? Or more specifically, what important changes have taken place in the perception of women's health and health care?

It is my emphatic purpose not to aim for completeness in this article. I conclude with recommendations for further research.

GENDER BEYOND REPRODUCTION

That there are differences between men and women with regard to reproduction was and is clear. Divergences between the sexes were therefore easily explained by anatomical and hormonal contrasts between men and women. Even today, the specific sex-related issues in reproductive function, such as pregnancy, infertility, contraception, menstrual problems and prostate disorders, receive the most attention in social debates and within the medical profession. If people step outside this domain of differences between the sexes, then the subject mostly turns to conflicts in communication in the style of Venus and Mars, in which, astonishingly, biological evolutionary determinism (i.e. such is the female or male predisposition) is not shunned.

However, there is growing realization that the biological differences between the sexes go beyond the reproductive functions alone. A steadily increasing body of evidence has revealed disparities in incidence, complaint presentation, symptoms and prognosis in many other health problems, such as HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, cardiovascular diseases and auto-immune disorders. Attention has been drawn to subjects such as gender and the human genome, in which the rapid progress in molecular biology has led to the discovery of a genetic and molecular basis for gender-related differences in diseases. Some are linked to the XX (female) or the XY (male) chromosome. It is not solely about the differences between the sex hormones XX and XY, but within the differences, there is also activity towards the other chromosomes and their characteristics and functions. During the course of life, the genetic information in the sex chromosome can be expressed differently between men and women, owing to a wide range of environmental factors. These genetic differences between the sexes influence other levels of human biological functioning on cell, organ and organism levels and thus also lead to differences in sensitivity and susceptibility to diseases between the sexes. Differences between the sexes can also be expressed non-uniformly in other biological phases of life, while certain factors, such as hormonal differences, can contribute to deviations in the development and course of diseases between men and women [START_REF] Wizemann | Exploring the Biological Contribution to Human Health: Does Sex Matter?[END_REF]. Research has revealed a number of examples: polymyalgia rheumatica (rheumatism of the muscles), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, migraine, fatigue, inflammatory intestinal diseases, schizophrenia, ADHD, atrial fibrillation and angina pectoris. In addition, the relationship between the hormonal cycle in women and the chance that a treatment will be successful is of importance: for example, does the timing of surgery within the menstrual cycle influence the prognosis of breast cancer? The differences in presentation form, disease course and complications between men and women mean that any preventive measures, diagnostic procedures and treatments should also be different.

In the light of the biological differences, the debate 'mind vs brain' is of importance. The debate is conducted with fervour by neuroscientists, some of whom believe that the discipline of psychology has had its day. All the emotions and behaviours of people can be demonstrated in the brain or can be expected to in the future, so little will remain for the mind, the domain of psychology. The hallmark of this debate is also that the mind and brain should not be viewed as opposites, not as dualistic, but instead presented as a monistic concept of all-explanatory unity. This unity concept arises within the notion of biopsychosocial, in which bio comes first and the psychosocial domain is incorporated into the biological domain. In this way, the psychosocial domain loses its relative independence as a scientific domain. Aspects of nature are dominant, whereas aspects of nurture become invisible. In the present treatment of disorders, the biological construction is clearly predominant -take for example the pharmacological treatment of depression and ADHD, whereas the social construction has been disposed of -take for example the disappearance of sociocultural education, district help and community work.

The debate naturally does not ignore the issue of differences between men and women. In this sense, brain leads to biological anchoring of differences between the sexes in the cerebrum and makes everything that has to do with gender disappear into the background.

In my opinion, however, the perception of biological irreversibility is incorrect, because a biological organism such as the human body is an open system that is influenced by environmental and evolutionary factors. Genes and sex hormones can never be the only explanations for differences between the sexes. A variety of genetic, hormonal, physiological and other factors are active at different times during the development of an organism and together they form a male or female individual. The dominant concept of evolutionary-biological cognition makes contextual factors such as individual development, social circumstances and culture subordinate to biological evolution, and considers these factors to be a function of evolution: psychology is transforming into neuroscience and sociology into bioscience.

In an earlier work, I pointed to the importance of interdisciplinarity in this context, in which neuroscientists need to be encouraged to perform research into differences between the sexes on the level of the brain and cerebral functions, but preferably embedded in an interdisciplinary manner in other relevant social and human sciences [START_REF] Lagro-Janssen | De tweeslachtigheid van het verschil[END_REF].

In conclusion, the current course needs to be carefully steered towards taking research beyond the reproductive boundaries alone and focusing on women's health throughout their lives. Biological differences as possible explanations for differences in risk factors or the course of diseases between men and women that rise above the observation that the sexes are just different by nature, are gradually receiving more attention. Furthermore, it is of more importance than ever to criticize the scientifically dominant concept of the purely biological primate as an explanation for diseases within gender studies and within the daily practice of care provision.

ABOUT WOMEN, MEN, SEX AND GENDER

One of the most important differences in health between the sexes is the shorter life expectancy of men, particularly the high susceptibility of young men to cardiovascular disease and lung cancer. In addition, the high mortality rates as a result of alcohol abuse, traffic accidents, drug abuse and suicides in male adolescents and the increase in acts of violence and criminality in boys have focused the attention of society on health risks in boys and men that cannot be explained solely on the basis of higher testosterone levels. Traditional role patterns and social views about manhood lead to risk behaviour, such as postponement of consulting a doctor, or keeping silent about emotional collapse in the case of potentially catastrophic diseases, such as cancer [START_REF] Courtenay | Constructions of Masculinity and Their Influence on Men's Well-Being: A Theory of Gender and Health[END_REF][START_REF] Mansfield | Why Won't He Go to the Doctor? The Psychology of Men's Help Seeking[END_REF]. These aspects can have diverse unfavourable effects on men's health. Now that men are focusing attention on the disadvantages of being male in terms of health, the danger arises that there will be a competition for public interest and sympathy between men and women: who is the worst off? The distinction that has been made between the notions sex and gender for the past 40-50 years therefore becomes important in the discussions. Sex refers to biological distinction between men and women, while gender refers to the social and cultural impact of being male or female and to behaviour, expectations and perceptions that are regarded as appropriate to men or women in a certain culture or society. Gender therefore implies men and women [START_REF] Doyal | Sex, Gender and Health: The Need for a New Approach[END_REF].

Within sex-specific health care practice, awareness of differences in socialization between the sexes and genders has held a central position for some time. Masculinity as a vulnerable factor in the health of men and the consequences of masculinity and femininity, i.e. gender, also in the health of women, are considered to be important, but have seldom formed the subject of scientific research or scientific reflection (van Oosten and van der [START_REF] Van Oosten | Seksespecifieke hulpverlening voor maatschappelijk werkers[END_REF]. This is gradually changing: research into specific problems in men and the relationship between these health problems and gender identity and the behaviour of men and women in society has started to emerge and has also claimed a distinct position in the scientific discourse [START_REF] Moynihan | Theories in Health Care and Research: Theories of Masculinity[END_REF]. One of the hypotheses is, for example, that masculinity in our culture is perceived and defined in a way that is dangerous to the health of many men. By means of the same scripts of masculinity, many women will also experience simultaneous harm to their health.

Men's problems not only have firm roots in science, but also in health care. In health care practice, separate outpatient clinics for men's problems have been shooting up like mushrooms over the past few years. The spirit of the age facilitates. The present conservative-liberal government policy encourages commercialization and private initiatives and is supported by the aim to improve quality by means of competition and freedom of choice for the patient. The cry for demand-orientated care from the perspective of autonomy, consciousness and well-informed clients fits seamlessly. The pharmacological industry is playing its own role. In the past, it invested heavily in scientific research into menopausal complaints performed by gynaecologists and became involved with menopause consultants and gynaecological menopause clinics [START_REF] Lagro-Janssen | Breast Cancer and Hormone-Replacement Therapy: Up to General Practice to Pick up the Pieces[END_REF]. Urological men's outpatient clinics followed. These focused chiefly on male-related micturition disorders, prostate complaints and erectile dysfunction. Potentially, there is a gigantic sales market to be won in elderly men and women. However, something that is missing from the categorical approach to everyday health problems is placing the complaints within a psychosocial context and consequently, establishing integral general practice management. Each complaint will be presented and dealt with as an isolated and independent phenomenon.

In conclusion, research has further evolved from women's health problems to gender in relation with health and now explicitly includes men and the social construction of masculinity. More attention has been drawn to men and everyday diseases. Not all this attention has led to direct improvements in the quality of care. In gender studies and adequate care provision, it is important to place these complaints into a psychosocial context as well.

THE DOCTOR M/F

The doctor of the future is a woman. More than 60 percent of first year medical students in 2006 are female and women are being recruited in all medical specialties; in some areas quite rapidly [START_REF] Noordenbos | Man of vrouw? Het maakt wel degelijk uit. Veranderingseffecten van vrouwen in de geneeskunde[END_REF]. The increase in women within the medical profession has resulted in increased research into differences in communication between male and female doctors and in differences in approach and management. In addition, differences in other professional aspects, such as teamwork/ cooperation and practice organization, have started to receive attention. The differences in career prospects between men and women, the glass ceiling, are visible in the extremely low number of female medical professors in the medical specialties and general practice. The position of female doctors has also become the subject of research over the past few years.

Attention to the gender of the care provider is of great importance, because, for example, in the implementation of sex and gender in medical training or in daily health care practice, it is far more often the female doctors who recognize the relevance of considering the issue of being male or female in patients and in their own medical profession [START_REF] Risberg | I am Solely a Professional, Neutral and Genderless[END_REF]. Male doctors, and especially those in the surgical specialties, relate professionalism to neutrality and value the notion of neutrality as being part of their competence. Professionalism therefore stands for performing the duties according to guidelines and protocols that are regarded as objective and universal. The application of these duties takes place neutrally without the issue of being male or female having anything to do with it [START_REF] Beagan | Neutralizing Differences: Producing Neutral Doctors for (Almost) Neutral Patients[END_REF]. Female doctors in policy-making positions are therefore indispensable, in order to carry out and give form to the importance of gender within the medical profession.

Involvement of the issue of being a man or woman as care provider in studies on the relationship between gender and health does justice to one of the basic principles of women's health care, namely that knowing one's own sex-specific socialization, course of life and context is important to the recognition and acknowledgement of sex-specific vulnerabilities in patients.

GENDER, CULTURE AND DIVERSITY

Insight into cultural differences and other perceptions of disease in immigrant patients is necessary to provide adequate care. Every doctor should take the cultural context of the patient into consideration and according to research, immigrant patients expect the doctor to consider their cultural background [START_REF] Harmsen | When Cultures Meet in Medical Practice: Improvement in Intercultural Communication Evaluated[END_REF]. This means extra effort on the part of the doctor. At an average general practice in a so-called multiple-deprivation neighbourhood or focus district in a large city, over half of the patients often comprise immigrants from more than 30-40 different countries. It is only fairly recently that empirical research has been conducted into the impact of cultural differences on daily medical practice. Scientific research into ethnic and cultural differences in disease and health remains scarce in relation to the size of the problem [START_REF] Harmsen | Etnisch-cultureel verschillende patiënten op het spreekuur, maakt het wat uit?[END_REF]. An important finding was that immigrant patients had a poorer view of care than indigenous patients; particularly the anticipatory policy did not conform with the management in their country of origin where medication is often prescribed quickly and in many different types, especially antibiotics.

In a study on the perceptions of Turkish and Moroccan women with urinary incontinence, one of the respondents spoke scornfully of her general practitioner as 'doctor normal part', which meant that in her opinion, the GP all too often explained the complaints as just being a normal part of a complaint, disorder or condition [START_REF] Van Den Muijsenbergh | Urinary Incontinence in Turkish and Moroccan Women: A Qualitative Study on Impact and Preferences for Treatment[END_REF]. For reasons that include poor communication and unfamiliarity with other views about disease, these people often feel that they are not being taken seriously. Every culture has its own conceptions about sickness and health [START_REF] Helman | Culture, Health and Illness[END_REF][START_REF] Kleinman | Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture[END_REF]. More immigrant patients than indigenous patients were found to have poor mutual understanding with their GP (33 percent and 13 percent, respectively). From the perspective of the GP, immigrant patients create a high workload through frequent visits to the surgery, often outside normal hours, as well as through perceived vague and improper requests for care. Moreover, this often happens in neighbourhoods in which owing to a low socioeconomic status, the workload has always been very high. Care provision to other cultures will not follow a problem-free course and be of adequate quality of its own accord. The medical practitioner will have to develop knowledge on ethnic and cultural differences, including expertise in communication and interaction with patients from other cultures. This means that in the same way as gender, the doctor will have to reflect on his/her own cultural views and norms.

It has become increasingly clear that certain dimensions, such as gender and culture, do not operate independently. Particularly in other cultures, sex and gender can have their own specific meaning. Differences should not be considered as separate entities and moreover, there are other differences between patients, e.g. age, education level, socioeconomic status, lifestyle and sexual preferences. Thus we arrive at the notion of diversity. This transition from sex into diversity has arisen under the influence of various factors, including the target of client-orientation, market influence and care on demand. In this context, the notion of diversity is also used as a strategic argument.

In daily health care practice, the problems of immigrant patients in relation to all the aforementioned diversity aspects are the most tangible. Owing to the increase in size of this patient group, they are also visibly urgent to the care provider. Moreover, there are obvious indications that medical care for them is sometimes inadequate. Particularly in the field of reproduction (traditionally the territory of women's health care), a great deal of improvement is possible in immigrant women in view of the high numbers of teenage pregnancies, unwanted pregnancies, abortions and the high maternal and perinatal mortality rates. The danger of broadening gender into diversity is that first, gender will fade away in favour of ethnic-cultural differences. But, even more important is that the notion of diversity is separated from its original development and becomes solely a synonym for an individual-targeted approach and for the individual differences that have always existed between men and women. A number of medical psychologists -of all people -who are occupied with doctor-patient communication are invoking the uniqueness of each individual to stigmatize knowledge on gender and cultural differences as stereotyping. The subsequent step within this notion is that an open approach is sufficient to achieve adequate care provision. Even though an open approach is a necessary condition in good health care, it is certainly not enough, because the danger arises that broadening the notion into diversity will lead contradictorily to dilution: the need for separate attention in knowledge, expertise and attitude to aspects of gender and culture on a group level will be enfeebled and disappear into the dustbin.

To summarize, over the past few years, the notion of gender has made room for diversity. This means that better shape can be given to criticism of two of the basic principles employed in medical care: neutrality (medicine is about people and not about men and women) and universality (something that applies to one also applies to all the others).

The drawback to such a high level of individuality thinking is that farreaching knowledge and consequently scientific domains within research and education are no longer of concern.

GENDER MAINSTREAMING

The same shift occurred in government policy. Initially, the focus was to remove the discrimination against women in, for example, equal accessibility to health care as described in the UN Women's Treaty. This treaty was ratified in the Netherlands in 1991. In the 1990s, criticism arose about this strictly woman-centred orientation that also viewed women as victims. In practice, it soon became clear that very little had ensued from the recommendations. Attention therefore turned to the (im)balance between men and women in society, while the orientation veered towards gender relations. As a policy strategy, gender mainstreaming was introduced internationally and nationally (UN, 2002). People regarded the gender perspective within health care policy as a necessary step towards better care for men and women [START_REF] Doyal | Gender Equity in Health: Debates and Dilemmas[END_REF]. This notion was also supported in the Netherlands. In 1999, a report was published by a steering committee instituted by Minister Borst under the title 'Towards a Sex-Specific and Multicultural Health Care Service in the 21st Century' (Stuurgroep Vrouwenhulpverlening Ministerie van VWS, 1999). One of the goals was to create sex-specific health care in medical training, because integration of the factor of sex into the basic training is a precondition for good sex-specific health care in the future. On the one hand, sex-specific elements needed to be included in medical training curricula and would also need to be revised as necessary, while on the other hand, medical students would also need to receive education on differences in illness and health between males and females. And so it happened. Medical curricula were revised in the Outline Plan 2001 and Women's Studies Medical Sciences in Nijmegen started an ambitious national project financed by Care Research The Netherlands to integrate sex into medical training at all medical faculties in the Netherlands [START_REF] Verdonk | Integrating Gender in a Basic Medical Curriculum[END_REF]. Another goal took shape in the project on gender diversity and quality policy at care centres, in which the University of Maastricht made a start with mainstreaming diversity in the quality policy by making officials aware of the importance of diversity to achieve a better policy. Furthermore, at the University of Amsterdam, standards and guidelines for physicians were analysed for gender blindness and methods were devised to incorporate the aspects of sex and gender into new guidelines right from the outset.

To sum up, over the past few years, a number of initiatives to implement sex/gender/diversity in health care practice have received attention and been backed by the government. The drawback is that a great deal of energy is being put into thematic applications of knowledge and into studying strategic implementation methods, which is having a detrimental effect on scientific innovative research.

FUTURE RESEARCH

At present, it is women who come into the most contact with the health care service, are prescribed the most medication and provide the most care for the health of their families and relations. In addition, for women, reproduction involves risks. Therefore, it continues to be important to strive for high quality reproductive health care that is easily accessible to everyone. This has been accomplished in the rich western countries for the majority of women. However, over the past few years, not only immigration and refugee problems, but also wider marginalization of people in our society, have served as reminders of the unequal risks of morbidity for example to mother and child during pregnancy and childbirth. Research should therefore focus more sharply on the conditions that threaten reproduction, preferably in the context of social reality, such as lack of knowledge, poverty, depression and violence during pregnancy and in consideration of individual life histories. The woman's voice needs to be heard in these matters.

Reproductive health will only partly dictate the research agenda. We have seen that studies on differences between the sexes revealed interesting insights into biological mechanisms. Being a man or a woman is an important basic variable that must be included in the set-up and analysis of fundamental medical scientific research and studies performed in clinical settings. For this purpose, an innovative approach to design, methods and measurement instruments, etc. may form a prerequisite. Moreover, we would recommend that when reporting the results and publishing articles, the differences between men and women should be recorded as accurately as possible. Part of this comprises explicit attention to the hormonal status of the women, such as the phase of the menstrual cycle, premenopausal or postmenopausal, when setting up the study and analysing the results. Furthermore, it is of great importance to conduct research into differences between the sexes in the presentation of complaints, perceived meaning, course and complications and the effects of treating disorders on the daily medical care of men and women. Chronic diseases should be given priority in studies on differences in, for example, co-morbidity and preventive measures between the sexes [START_REF] Pinn | Sex and Gender Factors in Medical Studies: Implication for Health and Clinical Practice[END_REF]. Inordinate focus on implementation research will undermine the appraisal of new patient-related and disease-related knowledge; so much still remains unknown and unexplored. If all future research into illness and health were to include the factors sex and gender in a consistent, accurate and critical manner in the set-up and analysis, then a wealth of information would be acquired in the knowledge domain of medical science (and associated disciplines). These differences between men and women, in the broadest possible sense, must more strongly determine future research in the field of women's studies medical sciences.

Finally, I would once again argue strongly in favour of interdisciplinary cooperation in fundamental medical research, epidemiology, the social sciences and clinical research. Over the past few years, a little of this has indeed become visible at symposia and in public debates, but in scientific research, interdisciplinarity remains sparse.

Ultimately, men and women will experience health benefits from a sex-specific approach that is based on knowledge on the role of sex and the influence of gender in health problems.

NOTE

This article was originally published in 2005 titled 'Sekse, gender en gezondheid' in Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies 2: 2-11.

European Journal of Women's Studies 14(1)


Salla Tuori

Åbo Akademi University

Gender Equality and Multiculturalism as Nation-Building Discourses

Keywords:

This article explores the discourses of multiculturalism and gender equality in relation to nation-building in Finland. The two discourses relate differently to the nation so that gender equality is seen as inherent to the nation while multiculturalism is seen as a challenge posed from outside. Nevertheless, the two discourses are dependent upon each other and cite each other. The material for the analysis is a document produced by an NGO-based multicultural women's project in Finland. The article can also be read as a contribution to the debate over the compatibility between gender equality and multiculturalism through an analysis of how gender equality -as an ideology and as a set of practices -is deeply embedded in the production of otherness in the Finnish context.

INTRODUCTION

What does 'gender equality' mean in terms of national identity? What new meanings does it acquire in the context of multiculturalism? In the Finnish context, political scientist Anne-Maria Holli (2003: 19) argues that 'Lately, "gender equality" seems to have evolved into a concept the main purpose of which is to maintain the sense of "us" as a national community.' Feminist analyses about how the discourses and politics of gender equality have been embedded in nationalist discourses in Finland are among the starting points for this article. The focus here is on the interconnectedness between gender equality and multiculturalism in the constitution of the 'nation'. I also participate in the discussion on the relationship between A common way to narrate 'the Finnish context' in relation to multiculturalism is to outline the transformation of Finland from a country of emigration to a country of immigration. It was only during the late 1980s that immigration exceeded emigration. By the end of 2005, 'foreign nationals' amounted to 2.17 percent of the population and people with a first language other than Finnish, Swedish or Sami a mere 2.82 percent (Population Statistics 2005 3 ). Of the total amount of 'foreign nationals' in Finland, most have migrated from Russia, Estonia, Sweden, Serbia-Montenegro and Somalia. Kurds from Iran, Iraq and Turkey also form a significant proportion of migrants. Fairly often this narrative of factual changes in migration patterns also includes an idea of 'Finland' being previously homogeneous or mono-cultural as a nation (e.g. Gordon et al., 2000: 197). In this narrative, multiculturalism is defined through 'the migrants'. The idea of nation as homogeneous until a certain date in its history is by no means unique to Finland. Stuart Hall, writing in the British context, argues that 'The national story assumes that Britain was a unified and homogeneous culture until the post-war migrations from the Caribbean and the Asian subcontinent' (Hall, 2000: 217). However, this is recently changing in Britain, where multiculturalism is in some instances seen as inherent to the nation (Fortier, 2005a).

The idea of homogeneity is sometimes contested through listing the 'old' minorities, the Sami, Roma, Tatars and the Finland-Swedish as part of the 'Finnish nation'. Essential for this discourse of nation is the assumption of the 'Finnish' subject with an unquestioned right to belong, even when the assumed historical homogeneity of the nation might be challenged (Fortier, 2005a: 573). It also shows that 'ethnicity' -and not, for instance, sexuality or class -is seen to form the significant 'difference' in the nation. This popular understanding of Finland as a homogeneous nation, as well as the fact that there has been little migration compared to most European countries, and the understanding of these two as interdependent, is crucial for making sense of the material in this article as well as Finnish discourses on multiculturalism at large.

In this article, I analyse discourses of multiculturalism and gender equality in an NGO-based and EU-funded (by the European Social Fund [ESF]) women's project in Finland. I call this project the 'Kitchen' in this article. I was involved in participatory ethnography between 2002 and 2004 in the field of multicultural women's politics 4 in Finland through participating in seminars and project work. While this article is part of the larger ethnographical work, the method applied in this text is critical discourse analysis (e.g. [START_REF] Van Dijk | Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis[END_REF]. Close reading of one particular text through discourse analysis enables me to explore in detail the discursive acts (of power). The material for this article is a document that summarizes some of the findings of the project work. The formal aim of the Kitchen, that is, the purpose for which it was funded, is to produce a model that is to be mainstreamed in the work of public and private sector institutions. The document analysed here is one version of this model, which has been produced during the project work and has been distributed in several versions and on various occasions. The document is not a final conclusion of the findings in the project, nor does it give an exhaustive picture of the work done in the project. Rather, it reflects the discourses on nation and otherness that are mobilized in the framework of multiculturalism in Finland.

The Kitchen was a three-year-long project that had a specific aim of enhancing possibilities for labour market participation for 'migrant women' in Finland. The Kitchen was an all-female project and (just) over half of the employees were 'migrant women', which has not been always the case in the Finnish context. There is also an outspoken claim for nonhierarchy, openness and participation by everybody, defined as 'the working principles of the project'. Female exclusivity, attachment to the women's movement and the claims for non-hierarchy make the Kitchen fairly unique in the Finnish context of EU-funded projects. The Kitchen is part of the proliferated EU-funding for short term projects run by NGOs, public sector institutions as well as private sector companies in the area of social policies. Funding has many effects on the work. The activities are scrutinized in an extremely detailed manner, at first by a local authority, and are then monitored nationally by a ministry. In this system it is ultimately the ministry that decides what kinds of activities are accepted as 'enhancing labour market participation', by allocating funding for these.

Hence, the text in focus is produced in the very specific context of EU policies and for a certain purpose, i.e. for the dissemination of the experiences gained in the project. Mainstreaming is a concept that has been introduced particularly through the EU. In the ESF programme that funds the Kitchen, mainstreaming is defined as: . . . the transfer of the results of an experiment to be implemented in other programmes and strategies. It refers to the dissemination of the [project's] experience [s] and good practices and their inclusion into strategies both within the Member States and at the Union level. Learning from projects should be organised locally, regionally and nationally. (Equal Programme, 2001: 58) In the programme, there is even a requirement that the individual projects must be 'capable and willing to co-operate at national and transnational level' (Equal Programme, 2001: 59). These kinds of requirements have necessary implications for an NGO-based project. The fact that projects are required to cooperate on different levels has an influence on, for instance, what kind of utterances can be made in order not to endanger cooperation. The requirements for cooperation are part of the funding agreement and also influence the chances of future funding.

JOIN US FOR A MULTICULTURAL SOUP!

As a result of the three-year project work the Kitchen has designed a model, or a collection of 'best practices' in EU terms, for enhancing labour market participation of 'migrant women'. The way in which the figure of the 'migrant woman' appears in the Kitchen is interesting and worth examination [START_REF] Lewis | Imaginaries of Europe, Technologies of Gender, Economies of Power[END_REF]. The Kitchen addresses itself to 'all' migrant women in the city the project is based in. Most participants have migrated from the former Soviet Union and from Middle Eastern, African and Latin American countries. The women who attend the Kitchen occupy varying positions, in terms of their legal status in the country, as well as within the gendered and racialized Finnish imagination. Women's official status may range from those who are residents and re-migrants 5 to asylum seekers and women with refugee status. The general focus on 'migrant women' can both work strategically, offer an opportunity for understanding multiple belongings, but it can also add to an erasure of differences between the women and the particularities of their positioning in the Finnish society. One result of the generalization of 'the migrant woman' is imagining 'her' as a figure that can be subjected to debates about 'who she is' or 'what she is like'. Decontextualization can contribute to an erasure of specific histories, which again reinforces imagined homogeneities (Brah, 1996: 184-5). Yet, I am also using the term 'migrant woman' in this article for a range of reasons. One reason for using this category is because it is the term that is used in the material being analysed. Furthermore, simply not using the word does not serve to deconstruct the figure of the 'migrant woman'. Apart from these reasons, there is also a lack of a suitable vocabulary in this context. Terms like 'black' as used in the British context (that is, as a political concept rather than as a description; see [START_REF] Alexander | Beyond Black: Re-Thinking the Colour/Culture Divide[END_REF] do not exist in Finland. For the purposes of this article, the term must stand, because the figure of the 'migrant woman' is central to both the gender equality discourse and the discourses of multiculturalism in Finland.

The model produced in the Kitchen is called 'Recipes for making a multicultural Finland soup'. This choice of words is interesting. On a general level, the title reflects the way in which 'multiculturalism' is often domesticated into consuming 'others' through food, music and other cultural products, both concretely and metaphorically [START_REF] Ahmed | Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality[END_REF][START_REF] Hage | White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society[END_REF][START_REF] Hooks | Black Looks: Race and Representation[END_REF]. In an online dictionary (www.kielikone.fi) the Finnish word for 'recipe' (in figurative use) was translated as 'formula'. Thus, offering 'recipes for a multicultural Finland' suggests that the project can give exact directions for successful 'multiculturalism'; multiculturalism can be as easy as cooking a soup. Apparent simplicity is important to the framework of mainstreaming and 'best practices' (see later) as this book of recipes is supposed to appeal to city councils and other authorities. In this kind of framework, where 'co-operative spirit' (Equal Programme, 2001: 59) is a requirement, there are fewer possibilities for generating troubling discourses that might, for instance, challenge assumptions about 'Finnishness' in the society. 'Soup' is also a metaphor for a messy and problematic situation. The tension between the easiness and the messiness is important. Easy as it might seem, it leaves a certain uncertainty of the result, what kind of soup are we actually cooking and for whom?

The messiness is already apparent in the term 'multiculturalism'. Homi Bhabha argues that multiculturalism is 'a portmanteau term for anything from minority discourse to postcolonial critique, from gay and lesbian studies to chicano/a fiction' and that it has become a 'floating signifier' [START_REF] Bhabha | Culture's in Between[END_REF]; see also [START_REF] Hall | Conclusion: The Multi-Cultural Question[END_REF]. Stuart Hall (2000: 209) makes a distinction between 'the multicultural' and 'multiculturalism'. The 'multicultural' refers to the characteristics and problems of governance posed when different cultural communities live together, while 'multiculturalism' refers to the strategies and policies that govern differences or 'diversity'. Östen [START_REF] Wahlbeck | Mångkulturalism i Finland: en kritisk litteraturöversikt[END_REF] also notes how in Finnish academic literature on multiculturalism, the term is seldom defined. I concentrate in this article on 'multiculturalism' as an object for analysis (how is 'multicultural Finland' imagined in the recipes) rather than as an analytical tool. Another important concept in this article is 'gender equality', which like 'multiculturalism' is often used without specific definition. These two are embedded in discourses of 'Finnishness' and the 'Finnish nation'. All this is served, through the recipes, to cook, eat and enjoy!

The EU framework and the 'best practices' have certain implications for how the multicultural is conceived. Sara [START_REF] Ahmed | The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism[END_REF] shows that when organizations acknowledge the appearance of racism within the institution, racism is often understood as a 'bad practice'. As 'bad practices' can always be replaced with 'good practices', racism and racialized structures are defined as surface or external elements, so that they are not something that constitute the organizations. The best practices, thus, frame multiculturalism as a set of practices that are better or worse. At the same time as this kind of approach fails to see how organizations are constituted through racialized and gendered structures and hierarchies [START_REF] Ahmed | The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism[END_REF], the focus on practices can imply a focus on what is done on an everyday basis, and not only on abstract 'ideologies' or 'values', which are widely circulated in reports and seminars on multiculturalism. As best practices and dissemination of the results of the project, the recipes can be read as texts that aim to define and establish the meanings of multiculturalism and equality in the Finnish context.

One of the versions of the recipes was introduced in the following way (my translation from Finnish): Dear Reader, We here at [the Kitchen] in [the city] have cooked a multicultural soup for everybody to taste. The cooks [keittäjät] are our immigrant mentors. 6 The main ingredients used are: paying attention to gender equality, finding one's own strengths and capacities, and grassroots wisdom. Spices are the colours that different cultures bring to the Finnish society and the salt in the bottom is support and help for each other.

First of all, I would like to pay attention to the division of labour. The word for 'cook ' [keittäjä] used in this paragraph refers to the soup [keitto], literally 'somebody who cooks the soup'. But a 'cook ' [keittäjä] is also somebody, often a woman, who works under the chef and particularly in mass kitchens (like school kitchens). The writer, who tells us the cooks are our immigrant mentors, apparently is not one herself. There is a tone of tutelage in the voice of the writer, in addressing the cooks as 'our' immigrant mentors. The notion of the 'cooks' being 'the immigrant mentors' (instead of the members of the Kitchen as a whole group) can be read as an appreciation of the work they do: it is upon their professionalism that we can rely on cooking multiculturalism. Second, it can also indicate that the change, that is, the creation of a multicultural society, is the responsibility of 'the migrant women'. And finally, it also confirms that multiculturalism is about 'otherness', marked through the 'migrant women', who are seen as the origin of difference that enables multiculturalism (see Fortier, 2005a). The eater of the soup is an all-inclusive 'everybody' in the spirit of 'mainstreaming'.

Despite the easy tone that the 'recipes' suggest, the ingredients are not at all 'easy'. Gender equality, and finding one's strengths and capacities and grassroots wisdom are all complicated, even vague, issues, which are made more appealing with reference to the 'spices' of diversity. As bell hooks (1992: 21) writes: 'The commodification of "Otherness" has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes a spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.' One could argue that the vagueness itself is a way of producing the Finnish nation as defined as a space in which smooth, non-antagonistic cultural interaction is fostered. That 'spices' add colour also shows the way in which Finland and Finnishness are marked with whiteness.

The model consists of eight recipes. Some of these describe forms of organization developed in the Kitchen, such as 'the immigrant mentors', 'small group activity' and 'personal guidance and support'. Others describe the approach to work and the central conceptual tools used in the Kitchen, such as 'empowerment', 'gender sensitivity', 'cultural awareness', 'set up of place' and 'equality training'. Many of the recipes start with introductions to different concepts, such as 'culture', and their use in the Kitchen. The outcomes of the different recipes are also described. It is interesting that multiculturalism is not mentioned or defined in the individual recipes. One could, therefore, think that the recipes together form the definition of 'multiculturalism'. For the purposes of this article, and to explore the questions I have posed about the alliance between the concepts of 'nation' and 'equality' in multiculturalism, I examine closely the recipe on equality training. I also focus on how the resulting 'soup' is described, which constitutes a description of what kind of nation is desirable.

GENDER EQUALITY AS PART OF BECOMING FINNISH

The aim of the recipe on 'Equality Training' is 'equality between all women and men living in Finland'. This statement locates equality between women and men, representing these as two different and coherently separate sexes without other differences than sexual difference. This is typical of the Finnish equality discourse in general (see [START_REF] Honkanen | On the Playing Fields of Power: The Truth of History, Belief in Gender and Hope in Equality[END_REF]. It also suggests that the recipients of the equality training are 'all women and men in Finland'. This could of course indicate that Finland is not almost equal as training in it is needed. Equality is defined in the following way:

Equality is valuing the person as him/herself and valuing and tolerating all his/her characteristics -masculinity, femininity, intelligence, education, origin of birth, etc. Still, it is very hard to change issues concerning equality, because the structures of the society -even [if] they would be for equality in principle -support the current practices.

Here, differences are reduced to personal characteristics, so that 'intelligence' and 'race' or 'masculinity' and 'femininity' are the same, or equally different. To think of differences as personal features individualizes the differences. The recipe suggests that an 'equal society' is a mix where no difference is to be dominant or more significant. Fortier (2005b) shows how 'multicultural Britain' is described as an equivalent mix of cultures in no relation of dominance to each other (see also [START_REF] Hage | White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society[END_REF] discussion of the 'Australian stew'). Hence, asymmetrical power relations, or how these differences intersect, become difficult to analyse when conflated in the logic of the symmetry and the sameness of differences. Furthermore, equality is achieved through valuing and tolerating these features and valuing the person as him/herself. The person as him/herself is not seen to be constituted through sexual, racial and other differences, but seems to refer to lifestyle or other 'personal characteristics'. There is a tension between the equivalence of differences and valuing the other as other (see Fortier, 2005b). Tolerance always includes the power not to tolerate, and therefore disguises and reproduces power relations (e.g. Hage, 1998: 85-8). Valuing differences, again, reflects the way in which migrants are often marked through difference, as the spices that give extra flavour [START_REF] Hage | White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society[END_REF][START_REF] Hooks | Black Looks: Race and Representation[END_REF][START_REF] Lewis | Welcome to the Margins: Diversity, Tolerance and Policies of Exclusion[END_REF].

Equality is also understood as a question of rights, so that equality as described in the recipe 'should make it possible for women and men to have the same rights and possibilities to fulfil their hopes and personal resources and make individual choices, which are not restricted by gender but humanity' (my emphasis). Two different issues emerge here. The first is that individuality is presented as an important component of equality, which links equality with the European/Nordic project of civilization [START_REF] Razack | Imperilled Muslim Women, Dangerous Muslim Men and Civilised Europeans: Legal and Social Responses to Forced Marriages[END_REF]. Second, 'equality' (as an ideal) is conceived of as a state of non-power. This has been prevalent even in feminist research on equality where a state of 'equality', that is non-hierarchical relations between men and women (or even 'people'), is the ideal to which 'we' fail to live up [START_REF] Honkanen | On the Playing Fields of Power: The Truth of History, Belief in Gender and Hope in Equality[END_REF]. When equality is understood as non-power, it also means that inequalities are, in a way, seen as bad practices [START_REF] Ahmed | The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism[END_REF], which can be replaced with good practices. Within a poststructuralist framework of understanding power as constitutive of subjects (e.g. [START_REF] Butler | Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity[END_REF], Sara [START_REF] Ahmed | Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality[END_REF] argues that gendered and racialized power relations make 'us' possible, and that therefore 'we' cannot deconstruct them through our own actions. In the context of 'gender equality' this would mean that instead of fantasizing about a state of non-power, the different racialized and gendered positions would be taken seriously. Thus, to think of equality as non-power on the one hand, means a specific understanding of power (as repressive and as power over somebody), and on the other hand, also works to conceal the ways in which gendered and racialized subjects are constituted through power relations.

The aim of the equality training is, according to the recipe, 'to give such education to migrant women that can strengthen them in daring to influence their own issues and help them to recognize inequality'. Here, it is the 'migrant woman', who needs to be educated in equality. For her to 'recognize inequality' could refer to an awareness of how the gendered and racialized structures and discourses in Finnish society have an impact on the migrant women's position. However, if this is read both in the light of 'cultural awareness training' and how gender relations of 'collective cultures' are presented in the recipes, 7 it seems that the inequalities are found in the 'migrant family' or the gender order of 'migrant communities' rather than in Finnish society (see also [START_REF] Razack | Imperilled Muslim Women, Dangerous Muslim Men and Civilised Europeans: Legal and Social Responses to Forced Marriages[END_REF]). In the quote that follows the results of the equality training are presented.

Equality training helps to recognize the fact that the world is different for women and men -in Finland as well -and that they have to face a different world with different expectations and assumptions. When these assumptions are made visible we can enhance the well-being, equality and existence of diverse possibilities in life and choices. The migrant person will also be integrated in Finnish society when he/she understands Finnish equality and historical and political views connected to it. (my emphasis)

To point out that 'the world is different for women and men -in Finland as well' echoes the narrative of Finland as an 'almost equal country'. It also indicates that the writer of the recipes is aware that there is more to 'gender equality' than the national story of advancement. If one considers multiculturalism and gender equality as necessary ingredients for a nation-building project, the recipes could also be understood as conditions for belonging to the nation. Thus, understanding 'Finnish equality and historical and political views connected to it' is a necessary requirement for belonging.

Considering that the Kitchen is an NGO-run project, there is astonishingly little (or no) critique of Finland and its policies. This can be interpreted in several different ways. First, it is surely due to the context of mainstreaming and EU funding -and possibilities for future funding. Second, it can also be about the way in which the recipes wish to imagine Finland as 'multicultural'. In this sense, the texts can be read through the theory of performativity [START_REF] Butler | Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity[END_REF] and how the recipes, for instance, make claims about Finland as equal or democratic. Third, the reasons might lie in the way in which the Finnish welfare state has been seen as 'women-friendly' and the nation as 'almost equal'. If the state is seen as women's ally rather than enemy, there is no reason to criticize it [START_REF] Bergman | The Politics of Feminism: Autonomous Feminist Movements in Finland and West Germany from the 1960s to the 1980s[END_REF]. Historically, much of the so-called autonomous Women's movement has worked in cooperation with state institutions and seldom in opposition to it [START_REF] Bergman | The Politics of Feminism: Autonomous Feminist Movements in Finland and West Germany from the 1960s to the 1980s[END_REF]. Close relationships between the state and civil society are not exclusive to the women's movement in Finland, but rather something considered typical for Finnish society [START_REF] Pulkkinen | The Postmodern and Political Agency[END_REF]. After the economic depression in the 1990s there has been a quite radical deconstruction of the welfare state so that the 'women-friendliness' of the state has been more publicly questioned [START_REF] Julkunen | Timanttejakin parempi ystävä? Hyvinvointivaltion murroksen sukupuolittuneet seuraukset[END_REF].

Thus, 'gender equality', as it is represented in the recipes, seems to be synonymous with a certain 'gender order', typical of Finland and other Nordic countries. Equality is therefore less about politics or anything that 'should be done'. Rather, it is a claim about something 'we are' (Holli, 2003: 19). Much of the 'equality training' is, in fact, about teaching a Finnish gender order. According to Gail [START_REF] Lewis | Welcome to the Margins: Diversity, Tolerance and Policies of Exclusion[END_REF], a claim to a superior, more 'equal' gender order is constitutive of 'Europe' and its civilization. Hence, the belief in nearly achieved gender equality in the Finnish context is part of this constitution of 'Europe' as modern and civilized in relation to its others as backwards. Gloria Wekker (2004: 490) also points out how white Dutch women are represented as 'the epitome, the teleological endpoint of emancipation, the example for black, migrant and refugee women, who apparently have a long way to go before they can measure up'. The discourse on gender equality could also be seen as a part of a manoeuvre to position 'Finland' as 'European'. The affirmations of equality can also be read as reiterative acts that firmly establish Finland's uncertain Europeanness to itself.

Apart from being a European story, the emphasis on gender equality is also particularly 'Nordic'. There are, of course, both similarities and differences to the 'Nordic countries', and here I refer to the discursive formation of the Nordic countries as nations where gender equality and social welfare are particularly developed and that such development is seen as evidencing their superior stage of evolution (see, for example, [START_REF] Carbin | The Meanings of Gender Equality: A Discursive Analysis of the Socialist Parties in Sweden and Finland[END_REF][START_REF] Razack | Imperilled Muslim Women, Dangerous Muslim Men and Civilised Europeans: Legal and Social Responses to Forced Marriages[END_REF]. The idea of Finland as an 'almost equal' or advanced nation, became prominent in the 1980s when the social policy measures improved to match those in the other Nordic countries [START_REF] Julkunen | Timanttejakin parempi ystävä? Hyvinvointivaltion murroksen sukupuolittuneet seuraukset[END_REF]. The notion of Finland as advanced and equal is particularly viable in reference to others. These 'others' could include anyone outside the Nordic countries, but references to 'collective cultures' in the recipes suggest that these 'others' are more likely to be outside the whole of (the discursively constructed) Europe than within it.

COOKING MULTICULTURAL NATION

The instructions in the recipes suggest that it will be 'the migrants' who are altered as an outcome of the recipes. At the same time, 'migrant women' are the 'cooks'; that is, they are those who are responsible for making the soup and therefore are the agents of change. Furthermore, 'migrant women' are the objects of knowledge in the recipes; in some instances there are detailed descriptions of 'their culture', apparently for the Finnish audience. This relates to what Anne-Marie Fortier (2005a: 14) describes as 'multicultural intimacy', which is fostered through ' "understanding" the other . . . being able to describe her, to "know" her, but where her identity is reduced to her lifestyle: her values, rituals, the food she eats'. That the change towards 'multiculturalism' is supposed to happen mainly through the individual migrants and their 'sense of themselves', leads focus away from racialized and gendered ideologies and structures that constitute the Finnish society and the project. Thus, in constructing multiculturalism, the 'migrant women' are both the ones to cross over and change, as well as the ones who are responsible for multiculturalism to emerge. This kind of focus implies both an individualistic understanding of power, as well as a voluntaristic one, which is common for neoliberal conceptions of nation and citizenship (Fortier, 2005a).

'The recipes for making a multicultural Finland soup' are richly invested in an idea of Finland as a 'good society', a society of democracy, gender equality and individuality. The recipes' aim is to construct this society as multicultural through educating the 'migrant woman', and sometimes the 'migrant man', and particularly teaching them to unlearn the supposedly more patriarchal gender order in which they live. This resonates with Spivak's (1999: 291) notion of how 'Imperialism's (or globalization's) image as the establisher of the good society is marked by the espousal of the woman as the object of protection from her own kind.' The best way to protect migrant women seems to be through altering the 'migrant woman' to be like 'us'. To establish Finland as a 'good society' can be strategically important in the context of funding: it becomes important to work in good spirit and appeal to the Finnish institutions that control funding.

There are interesting tensions between crossing over, change and staying in place in multicultural women's politics. There is a clear expectation of change in the Kitchen; migrant women are those who are supposed to cross over 'cultural boundaries' and perhaps those who are seen capable of crossing over. At the same time, as Fortier (2005a) and [START_REF] Ahmed | Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality[END_REF] point out, in order for the nation to imagine itself as multicultural, the other must stay in place as the other. Hence, the tension between change and stasis is part of the messiness of the multicultural soup. The idea of cooking and recipes suggests an understanding of multiculturalism as 'richness', something that adds to the 'Finnish' but does not challenge it. 'Multiculturalism' and 'gender equality' cannot be understood as separate from each other; the discourses cite each other and rely upon each other. Rather than asking whether feminism and multiculturalism are compatible (a question which tends to invoke the thought of 'multiculturalism' -i.e. 'migrant cultures' -as a possible 'threat'), it would be important to examine closely these discourses in their different contexts, and to consider how they are invested in producing western and white subjects as 'equal' or 'more advanced'.

NOTES

This article was mostly written at the Women's Studies Department at the University of Lancaster. I would like to thank Anne-Marie Fortier and Gail Lewis for excellent and inspiring comments on the text in its many stages. I would also like to thank Alannah Birch, the anonymous referees and the editors for very helpful comments.

1.

This discussion has particularly concerned the so-called group rights and whether one can criticize cultural practices (that are considered patriarchal) 'from outside'. I do not participate in the discussion of group rights as such, but through analysing discourses of multiculturalism and equality discuss how these are embedded in national and colonial discourses.

2.

See posters from a project 'MoniQ', coordinated by the Ministry of Labour in Finland; at: www.mol.fi/mol/fi/03_tutkimus_ja_kehittaminen/05_han-kkeet_ja_ projektit/21_moniq/index.jsp 3.

At: www.tilastokeskus.fi/tup/suoluk/suoluk_vaesto_en.html 4.

This article is part of a larger research project where I study the strategies and discourses on race/ethnicity and gender in 'multicultural women's politics' in Finland. By this phrase I refer to a loose network of both NGOs and authorities that work with questions of gender and race/ethnicity, often in the context of 'gender equality politics'. 5.

'Re-migrants' refer particularly to the so-called Finnish 'Ingrians', i.e. people with Finnish ancestors from the former Soviet Union. In 1990, legislation was enacted to enable Finnish 'Ingrians' to migrate to Finland. 6.

'Immigrant mentors' are the 'key actors' of the project. The idea is (roughly) that 'immigrant women' who have themselves migrated to Finland are the best supporters for other 'immigrant women' going through the same process. The other employees are non-migrants. 7.

One of the recipes focuses on 'cultural awareness'. In this recipe, cultures are presented as being 'individually' or 'collectively' oriented where 'collective' cultures are more family based and the 'roles' of men and women more strictly defined. As a result of the cultural awareness training, 'the immigrant person is integrated in Finnish society. The former home country and its culture are seen as a valuable tradition, a basis for your own individuality.' The former culture is thus valuable as history, as past. As a mark of integration (of becoming like us) it will form the basis for the inmmigrant person's individuality, which is the successful departure from the supposed collectivity of the 'former culture'.

European Journal of Women's Studies 14(1)