Swedish News:

Women make 900 USD less. Kate Hudson modeling for Swedish chain Lindex. First raccoon ever spotted in Skane.

Hollywood star Kate Hudson is Lindex’ spring model this year. Photo courtesy of Lindex, www.lindex.se
Women make $900 less
Actually make that $930 or 6,000 SEK. The new equality barometer from LO, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, shows that working women make on average $930 less per month than working men. The lack of fulltime jobs in traditionally female jobs is the main reason. ”In all public statistics covering the differences in incomes, we’ve always translated women’s part time jobs into full time, in order for us to be able to compare them with each other. This has reduced the problem into something smaller than it in reality is,” says Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson, chairman of LO. Jobs in the blue-collar sector means a monthly salary of 17,000 SEK ($2,636) for women, as compared to 23,000 SEK ($3,567) for men. Within the collar occupations, the women’s average employment level is 78% of the time, while the same figure for men is 93. ”By adding the class perspective to the equality debate, we hope to deepen the picture and influence the debate during the International Women’s Day,” says Joa Bergold, welfare and equality analyst at LO. In order to raise the temperature around equality issues in time for the International Women’s Day, LO is launching a temporary logotype where their ”O” is being replaced with the Venus symbol, the gender symbol for women. Even Saco (the Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations), will put focus on the differences in salaries between men and women. Using a new digital tool, they show that women during their lifetime makes 2.6 million SEK ($403,000) less than men after taxes.
A raccoon has been found – dead – in Skåne. Raccoons, however common in continental Europe, are rarely if ever spotted in Sweden. Photo: Darkone
Kate Hudson modeling for for Lindex
Look who’s modeling for Lindex! It’s actress Kate Hudson, daughter of Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson, and Oscar-nominated for her breakthrough part in ”Almost Famous” in 2000. Hudson isn’t the first major star to star in Lindex ads, she is merely following in the footsteps of Penelope Cruz, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Reese Witherspoon. Perhaps Hudson needs the extra cash? According to ”Age, gender, and compensation: A study of Hollywood movie stars”, the income of female movie stars decrease markedly once they pass the age of 34 (Hudson is 34). Be that as it may, the clothes Kate Hudson is modeling for Lindex will be out in stores on March 19. Lindex, a fashion chain with stores in Scandinavia, the Baltic States, Russia, Central Europe and the Middle East, was founded in 1954 by Ingemar Boman and Bengt Rosell in Alingsås. For more: www.lindex.se
Equal? Not really. In time for the International Women’s Day, on March 8, LO is putting some heat on equality issues in Sweden by showing, for instance, that women make an average of $930 less than men on a monthly basis.
First raccoon ever spotted in Skåne
The first raccoon ever has been spotted out in the open in Skåne. It was dead when it was found, on a beach in Falsterbo this past weekend. It had probably drowned after having hitchhiked on a ship from continental Europe, according to the County Administrative Board in a press release. Originally, the raccoon belongs to a huge area in Central- and North America, but it has been introduced to Europe. For instance, the German raccoon population today stems from a couple of raccoons that were let out in 1934 by a park ranger in Hessen.