The hostility that Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s government has faced is a good example of the misogyny that still exists in Finland. While Finland has made important strides in gender equality, women still make, on average, 20% less than men.
Even if women in Finland became the first to have the right to vote in 1906, it was not until 1984 when women were able to grant citizenship to their children through jus sanguinis.
Finland also had draconian laws against foreigners and foreign investment thanks to the Restricting Act of 1939 (Law 219/1939), which was made redundant in 1992.
Moreover, Finland got its first Aliens Act in 1983, or about 66 years after independence in 1917. Finland was also the last Nordic country to approve gay marriages in 2014.
If Prime Minister Marin’s government is made up mostly by women, when will we see ministers who represent minorities? When will Finland have its first black or gay prime minister?
I am confident that that day will come no matter how much racist, homophobic, and sexist kicking and bitching we see in Finland from the Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset,* and mainstream parties like the National Coalition Party, Christian Democrats and other.
These social ills, which have come out into the open, are examples that not only must we do more work in tackling these problems but that we are winning the battle.
In Argentina, we had a saying whenever there was a military coup. We used to say to each other that “there is no evil can last a hundred years.”
