Oslo, Norway — On Monday, another International Women's Day came and went. As always, different countries still find themselves challenged to empower their women.

A comparison of the state of emancipation between Norway and Uganda provides a depressing or, depending on how you look at it, inspiring picture of the distance we have yet to travel to attain some semblance of equality.

Though still facing profound challenges and inequalities, Norway managed to come second - to Iceland - in its economic and gender equality status by the 2003 UNDP Human Development Report.

By comparison, Ugandan debates on gender equality seem outdated, especially given that they are still grounded on the basic fundamentals such as property sharing, inheritance, polygamy, divorce and bride price.

In Norway, the law protects women's rights to own property (co-ownership) in a marriage, while no stringent norms dictate property inheritance either in or out of a marriage. Polygamy is considered taboo while a bride price is unheard of.

Women's rights to property are vigilantly protected in times of divorce. In fact Norway was among the very first countries in the world - twenty-six years ago - to appoint a special Gender Equality Ombudsman whose main roles include monitoring appointments in the public and private sectors.

Pursuant to the act relating to equal status issues as early as 1978, all discrimination on the basis of gender was prohibited. To advertise for a 'woman secretary' is illegal. All appointment notices must be gender neutral (with a few exceptions; say models, actors etc).

As early as 1888, and renewed in 1918 and 1927, married women were granted equal footing with men with regard to divorce, custody of children and right to property.

Norway has had and still continues to have women in higher echelons of power.

Since the 1980s, Norway's changing governments have almost always been 50% women.

Norway's second Prime Minister and president of the parliament (Storting) Gro Harlem Brundtland (also the former president of the World Health Organisation) had the world's highest proportion of women in her cabinet, with women holding eight of the eighteen ministerial positions.

Other prominent women include the commissioner of the Oslo Police directorate, the president of the University of Oslo, governor of Svalbard (a small island in Norway's Arctic Far North) and Norway's first woman bishop (1993) Rosemarie Kohn.

Unlike Uganda where women NGOs are at the forefront of the emancipation campaigns and policy reform agendas, in Norway, the need for special activist organisations has been minimal.

So powerful has the women's rights movement in Norway been that today there is discussion that equal rights should start focusing more on the rights of men as women have "attained enough" rights.

The common joke here is that women in Norway are so powerful that they are ranked as follows in the family tree: women, children, pets and then men.

According to Hanne Størset of the Network for Research About Men, there are "hjeleptjenester" a Reform Resource Centre in Norway where men faced with abusive marriages or relationships can go for counseling.

She also says that on the whole, these facilities do not equal the magnitude of the women's resource centers.

"I think that our biggest challenge in the years to come is to focus on the man in gender equality," says Gender Equality Ombud Anne Lise Ryel.

"It's high time men draw up an agenda for their struggle for equal rights."

This focus on men has already resulted in changes in maternity level legislation meant to benefit the man. Under Norwegian law, men can take at least a month off for paternity leave and there is at least a 36,000 Kroner ($5,143) cash reward to a family that takes care of their children at this tender stage.

Women organisations, radical parties and trade unionists are up in arms against this move, as they believe it will dismantle much of what has been built over the past 30 years.

Although Norway is basically an egalitarian society, the labour market is still largely drawn along gender lines. The majority of working women have jobs that are less prestigious, lower paid and with fewer opportunities for advancement compared to men.

Størset says that this is because men are in the private sector, which pays better salaries, compared to government dominated women labourers.

Although more than 70 percent of Norwegian women today have paid employment (the triple roles of women in the home; reproduction, production and community are recognised and compensated, there still exists a handful of women in leading positions in Norwegian businesses and industry.

Records show that only 3.5 percent of top executives of Norwegian corporations are women. This is a smaller percentage when compared to the US, UK and Spain. The middle management level is 7.5 percent.

Central government figures are also disconcerting. Full-time women employees make up 44 percent of the civil service. The figures are similar in political posts as they are in local government.

Although there is a rise in "pram-pushing, dish washing and house cleaning men" as much as there has been a significant number of well educated women into male-dominated professions, Norwegian women still find themselves torn between raising a family and working full-time jobs.

There is little doubt that Norwegian women still retain the bulk of the responsibility for the home and kids.

The challenges that persist are universal. It's still a male dominated world and only some countries are at a higher level of emancipation.

This year, Norway's top priority themes include advocating for gender sensitive pension reforms, sex crimes, violence and low salaries.