Margunn Bjørnholt

Margunn Bjørnholt (born 9 October 1958 in Bø, Telemark) is a Norwegian sociologist and economist. She is a Research Professor at the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS). Her research focuses on men and masculinities, work–family arrangements, gender equality, migration, violence, money and financial institutions, and management and organization. She is a former President of the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights and the Norwegian Women's Lobby.

She studied politics, contemporary history, regional planning and economics, and holds a cand.mag. degree from the University of Tromsø (1981), an MA in European economic studies from the College of Europe in Bruges (1981–1982), a mag.art. (PhD equivalent) in economic sociology from the University of Oslo (1995), with a dissertation on microfinance, ethical and interest-free banking, a fil.dr. (PhD) in gender studies from Örebro University (2014), with the dissertation Modern Men on men's work–family arrangements, intergenerational transmission and social change, and full professor competence in gender studies.

She has previously worked at the Regional Development Fund (now Innovation Norway), at the National Institute of Technology, and as a partner in a consultancy, promoting regional development and entrepreneurship, with a particular emphasis on female entrepreneurship. From 1993 she was affiliated with the Project for an Alternative Future, a research project at what is now the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo. Since 1997 she has worked as a researcher at Telemark Research Institute, the Work Research Institute and the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo. She is now a Research Professor at the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS).

She has been a visiting scholar at the Feminism and Legal Theory Project at Emory University School of Law and at the GEXcel Center of Gender Excellence, and has served as a national expert on gender equality to the European Commission DG for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities.

Her research interests encompass ethical banking and microfinance, organisational and spatial flexibility in the public sector, management, gender equality, work–family arrangements, qualitative research methods and cultural sociology. She is an expert on men's role and agency in social change towards more egalitarian work–family arrangements.

In recent years her research has focused on fathers and sons, and she has carried out a follow-up study 30 years later of Erik Grønseth's pioneering, experimental gender equality research from the 1970s, which studied gendered patterns of breadwinning and care. Another focus is the cultural adaptations and transnational practices of Polish emigrants to Norway, and how migration leads to social change. She currently heads a research project on intimate partner violence with emphasis on gender, gender equality and power at NKVTS, which is funded by the Ministry of Justice and Public Security.

She was co-editor, with the Scottish economist Ailsa McKay, of the 2014 book Counting on Marilyn Waring: New Advances in Feminist Economics. The book was described by Alison Preston as "a timely reminder of the politics and economics underpinning what, how and by whom activities are valued." According to Choice, the book explores "a wide range of issues—including the fundamental meaning of economic growth and activity to consumption, health care, mortality, unpaid household work, mothering, education, nutrition, equality, and sustainability" and reveals "the breadth, depth, and substance that can grow from innovative ideas and critical analysis." Diane Elson argues that "despite many valiant efforts, women do not as yet really count in the conduct of economic policy. This book is an imaginative contribution to an ongoing struggle."

She was involved in the ethical banking movement in the 1990s as chair of a working group attempting to start a bank in Norway modelled after JAK Members Bank in Sweden. She has been President of the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights (2013–2016), President of the Norwegian Women's Lobby (2014–2016), and board member of the International Alliance of Women (2013–2016). She was a journalist for the feminist radio station radiOrakel in the early 1980s, and she was a candidate for the Green Party in the 2015 elections.