4From Managing Equality to Managing Diversity A Critical Scandinavian Perspective on

Gender is a relevant and important aspect of organizational diversity and consequently also of diversity in society. For obvious reasons gender is the most extensive diversity dimension from both time and space perspectives. It has, therefore, historically probably occupied a privileged position which, however, can be challenged by other dimensions in some contexts. The concept of diversity emerged in the European debate in the 1990s. As with many other organizational concepts and theories, it was imported from the United States. The debate sounded like something we had heard before in gender-related discussions. Also, the way the problems were presented and the solutions seemed very familiar. Although gender was often implicit in the concept of diversity, like other individual characteristics such as handicap and sexual preference, it was, however, race, or rather ethnicity,1 which was the most important dimension.2 The other aspects were more or less loosely attached. Likewise, ethnicity was not often mentioned when gender was in focus. However, in gender research an ethnic dimension can be included and in ethnicity a gender dimension. Which of these i