The question you don’t ask a Swede part II Posted by jennie on Sep 17, 2010 in Culture
First of all, well done you sweet people who actually took time and made the effort with the celebrity puzzle! I admire your creative solutions with the answers as well and if my hidden stash of Swedes sweets (Tibor’s post yesterday was pure torture, thank you!!) were bigger, I would send something to all of you. But I have to pick blaaraeka as this week’s winner – for being quick, inventive and correct! Well done!
Well, election is almost upon us now (Sunday and from what I could figure out from your comments, the big voting q seems like taboo in many places. But – I have realized something quite important regarding this this week. The Swedes have opened up a lot more about how they vote this election – all thanks to Facebook. I have seen an endless amounts of “vote for…”-statuses, political posters, snippets from debates, photos etc and I can safely say I know much more about my friends political views now than four years back, when Facebook wasn’t as massive as it is today. Perhaps Facebook will kick this taboo’s butt, just like it has done with our stupid Jante law?
Alright then, the other question you should never ask a Swede… I had some great suggestions, like “How much do you weigh?” (Vad väger du?) “Are you married?” (Är du gift?) or “Are you religious?” (Är du religiös?) and even thought it probably isn’t great to ask someone about their weight, I’m pretty confident it would have been much more offensive to ask “How much do you earn?” (Vad tjänar du?)
Talking about salaries are a big no-no i Sweden and I can’t for my life understand why. I think it would help people if we were more open about these things, help people to fight for the salaries they are entitled to and make the gaps smaller. But no, you just don’t talk about it, period. Is this a form of Jante law-complex as well? You shouldn’t show off, brag, think highly of yourself etc…? I don’t know. Is it the same where ever in the world you are?
My suggestion for the new government in Sweden: Let’s put our salaries on Facebook as well!
Have a great weekend and make sure to check our Facebook page for some voting results on Sunday! Alliansen or de rödgröna, that’s the question!
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Comments:
Emilio Quintana:
And what about this? http://www.extrakoll.se/
By the way, i was asking many Swedes about what party has voted, and all of them answered to me the party.
This post and the other before doesn´t match with my experience.
Nikki:
Interesting! How come it’s not ok to ask if someone is married?
jennie:
Emilio: Yes you can LOOK UP pretty much what everyone earn, you can look up pretty much everything about anyone in Sweden if you have their personnummer, but that’s a whole different thing than talking about it, isn’t it?
Glad you got answers from your friends! Was it a good party btw? No politival rows? : )
Nikki: No, that is perfectly alright! It was just an example of what people had guessed, but I suspect that the person whu guessed that was just joking. Right, Luke?? : )
Emilio Quintana:
Your personal number is your datebith, so everyone knows your age. Maybe some people doesn´t talk about it; in my experience it´s the opposite. You know the age of the people, so why are not going to talk about this? I have never had problem about this. Neither with political parties. When i ask “Vem du röstat pa?” People answer me. Ok, it´s my experience, that´s all.
Angela:
Here in the US it’s never a good idea to talk about salary. Some companies even have it as a written policy that employees are not allowed to discuss their salaries with anyone but their boss. Any time I have seen coworkers discuss their pay, it always results in workplace drama.
Katy:
My personal experience (UK) is that some people love to brag about their salaries and others wish not to discuss it. I can understand why some people would want to know, such as I work in a department with one other woman, she is on a much higher salary than me due to the number of years she has been there, but I do more work and am paid less. Doesn’t seem fair. And I can see why she would not want everyone to know what she earns.
I do not know if there is somewhere we can check everyone’s salaries, but if there was, I wouldn’t want to be part of it!
Letícia:
It’s the same in Brazil. Most people here are very secretive about their financial matters. Not only you shouldn’t ask how much they make, but you also have to find the most polite way to ask how much they pay or paid for something, explaining why you want to know. I remember I once asked a friend how much he paid for college and he refused to answer.
I agree with you, I think people should be a bit more open about these things, so they can know if they’re making what they deserve (or even if they’re paying fair prices for stuff).
When I was in college, I was angry that even our teachers wouldn’t tell us how much we would expect to make as professionals. I understand some things are personal, but in this case I just don’t get it.
Lucy:
I think that in Canada we are very open about how much money we make. Since the country is so big we need to know where to go to make the most money…out West is where all the development is happening so there’s lot’s of money out there. I’ve heard women asking men “how much money do you make?” at a bar before they even think of dating them. I feel like we are very picky when it comes to our salaries, we will not settle for less than what we deserve and we have made that known to the government which is why our minimum wage goes up every few months. We do not brag about our salaries, but we are open about how much we make. And mostly everyone I’ve met has been very generous.