Depends on where you look and how hard you look and what your definition of "control" is. If you go to fundie-land on the west coast of Jylland you'll probably find some - ah - traditional family structures. If you go to the ghetto and look at people from backwards countries, you'll probably find some there as well (although probably fewer than the smut press would have you believe...). If you look hard enough, you'll probably find some such relationships anywhere, but my gut feeling is that they are less common outside the ghettos and east of fundie-land.

That being said, there is still very much a glass ceiling for women career-wise, they still take care of a disproportional share of the housework and childrearing and generally have lower wages and less prestigious jobs. We have almost as many high-profile female politicians as male, but I'd guess that if you look at all our MPs most of them will be male (and I strongly suspect that it's even worse in municipal politics). That's just a guess, though.

But I have the impression that gushing about "family values" in Scandinavia is less about restoring or maintaining the patriarchy (outside a few fundie circles) than about shifting responsibility for maintaining a social safety net from the state to the family.

- Jake

Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam