ABSTRACT
This chapter describes development by outlining how different images and legal representations of gender equality have travelled back and forth between the Nordic countries and the UN from the 1970s to the present, and what this might entail for branding the countries and region as champions of gender equality. It shows how the homecoming of international equality and anti-discrimination standards that these countries support at the international level is often met with resistance at the national level. The Nordic countries' enactment of general gender-equality and anti-discrimination laws in the 1970s and 1980s signalled the start of a strategic shift from specific and programme-based to general and rights-based gender-equality strategies. In its concluding observations on the reports from the four Nordic countries, the CEDAW Committee has expressed similar types of critiques regarding the shortcomings of the gender equality and anti-discrimination laws of each country.
