Minister of Gender Equality Affairs Stefan Wallin, presented Finlands first gender equality government report in October this year. The report gives guidelines for gender equality policy up to 2020. The purpose has also been to evaluate the Government's gender equality policy and related measures over the past ten years.
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| Stefan Wallin. Foto: Magnus Fröderberg/ norden.org |
Minister Stefan Wallin, emphasizes the opportunity to combine work and family, and that the report includes a parental leave model in three parts, where the parents receive one third of the leave each, while one third can be divided freely between them.
"Shared responsibility for the family supports the partner relationship and prevents divorces. According to an English study, fathers who participate in family life are happier, and according to the WHO, they are also healthier", Stefan Wallin says. "The report contains much material for future gender equality politics", he notes. "It’s obvious that in the future we must better consider the position and needs of various minorities. We should also pay more attention to the gendered consequences of solutions within financial politics, since they affect us all."
In Sweden the first Government communication to the Parliament on gender equality was presented in the mid-1990s and Norway did a corresponding White paper for the first time in 1992.
Read more at the Ministry's homepage
Power study now also in Finland
The extensive research programme Power and Society in Finland (2007-2010) was completed in September. Of the 20 projects, funded by a total of 6.5 million euros by the Academy of Finland, five focussed on gender and power.
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| Illustrationphoto: Colourbox |
The researchers studied differences in the use of public and private power between men and women: in politics, working life,
industry and the family. Globalised politics and economics, and changes in welfare constituted central themes in the studies
of state and institutionalised power. However, studies have also been conducted from a historical perspective, as well as
exploring more everyday and informal power relationships.
This is the first extensive study of power in Finland since the 1970s. The Scandinavian countries all conducted scientific
power studies in the 1990s, which to a large extent enabled a comparison of the distribution of power between men and women
in the various countries. However, this Finnish study of power is of a somewhat different character.
"The whole concept has been different in the Finnish case. In the other Nordic countries the power studies have been directly tied to the political process and often started with politicians wanting such a study to be done. But this has been a typical research programme within the Academy of Finland," says the leader of one of the projects, Kevät Nousiainen, referring to the breadth of studies with many contributions also from the humanities.
- Power in Gendered Organizations: Workplaces and Gender Equality
Scientific leader: Tuula Heiskanen, University of Tampere
- The Paradoxes of Finnish Gender Power Order: Law, Politics and Multilevel Governance
Scientific leader: Kevät Nousiainen, University of Turku
- Strategic Practices: Hidden Histories of Gender in Finland 1880-2055
Scientific leader: Laura Stark, University of Jyväskylä
- Forcing the Way: Women in Professional Networks of Power and Knowledge in 20th-Century Finland
Scientific leader: Jouko Vahtola, University of Oulu
- Empowerment and disempowerment in Finland 1550-1980
Scientific leader: Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, University of Turku
