Saturday, October 13, 2007

Out of touch with reality: ..but my heart still tells me that it's true..

Visiting Norway last weekend, I happened to read something in Dagens Næringsliv, which kind of made me laugh.

The piece I read was in reference to some statement the Norwegian princess Märtha Louise made in an interview with a Swedish newspaper. In her opinion, men and women in Norway are completely equal when it comes to salary and career opportunities. She could as well have paraphrased Ronald Reagan's famous quote, "My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not", because the facts and the evidence clearly show that what she said is not true. According to the facts, women have on average 30% lower salaries than men, even in leading positions.

The opinion piece in Dagens Næringsliv went roughly like this:

"Bad connotations

Princess Märtha Louise tells the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that she is not a feminist. She says that 'the word feminist is a word with such bad connotations'.
Soon the word royalist is, too."