The General Situation

The economic depression is felt very strongly in Finland as the country is part of the western capitalist system. The main exports are wood and paper products which in the last years have suffered a severe decrease of demand.

The annual inflation is 14 per cent and about every tenth person is unemployed. Every third person of those leaving school go unemployed. Many factories have dismissed a part of their personnel, other factories work only three or four days a week. The branches demanding much labour input are worst hit, and these are the branches where most women work. In this situation many women fear to loose their jobs and are reluctant to fight for their rights. Reactionary measures and ideas get more growing room than for example five years ago.

Until recently we had a center government which cut down on the projects concerning creches, which initiated a plan for paying mothers of small children to stay home a meager allowance from the state and which took steps to encourage women to take on half day jobs. Now we have a center-social democrat-communist government whose main aim is to stop unemployment, to get through a law on workers participation in the factories (this law is not very far-reaching) and to mend the failures of the previous government.

The Child Care Question

Only every third child in need of care when the mother is working (half of the working force is female, the highest proportion outside the socialist countries), gets care in communal child care centers. The majority of small children are cared for by private persons, who look after 2-3 children each without any subsidy from public funds.

When a woman who is working has a child, she gets 174 days leave from her work and the state pays her an allowance during this period. The father has no right to this leave. Now the workers union has slowly begun to consider an alternative to this unfair condition and there is hope that in some years time the father will have the right for a leave from work to attend to his newborn (in Sweden this bill has been passed some years ago). In Finland there is no law forbidding firms to advertise for female/male labour, although discrimination once the person is put on the pay roll, is illegal. This does not alter the fact that women work mainly in about 20 branches while men choose between 150 various job classifications. The women's mean earnings are only 70 per cent of the men's.

Although the law does not allow sacking because of pregnancy, sacking occurs frequently under some disguised pretext. If a child is ill, the mother and not the father has the right to stay home three days with her sick child.

Female Representation

In the private sector only 4 per cent of the leading posts are held by women. In the state sector the percentage is 10. In the parliament about 30 per cent of the representatives from the various parties are women. In all political parties the male/female proportions in the party hierarchies are less than this, which shows that when people can directly choose their candidates, there is less superstition against women than within the party structures. Now social democratic women from one town have demanded a 30 per cent representation on all levels within the party. This proposition is going to be on the agenda for the party's general assembly next year (this strategy has been adopted from Norway and Sweden).

Women and Work

There is a law against women working night time, but this law is not enforced and most of the people working third shifts are low income women.

The membership in the labour union is 40 per cent female, but only 3 per cent of the top positions are held by women and there are many unions with majority membership of women where women are not in power positions. This naturally effectively suffocates the women's demands of which one of the most acute is the establishment of new norms for work evaluation. As it is now, jobs done by women are jobs which demand quick reactions, which are monotonous and split up in small parts. This kind of work is, in union negotiations, considered unskilled and thus low pay work.

We have a delegation for equality which comes out with various reports on women's situation in and outside work. There is no ministry or minister for women's questions. There is a new law for workers' protection which has been much criticized by the right but which is one of the few positive steps in the area of work in the last few years. A law which will enlarge the concept of illness resulting from poor working conditions is going to be passed soon. In this law mental illness can be considered caused by poor working conditions.

Women and Education

Only this year has the school reform been put into practice in the whole of Finland, which means 8 years of equal schooling for all children. Until now there has been great inequality in the school system as the children went to the same elementary school for only three years, after which the children mostly from the bourgeois classes went to lyceums and the others stayed in the elementary school with poor schooling as a result. Half of the students in universities are female but in the trade schools women are in minority, which means that there is a higher percentage of unskilled women than men.

As to schooling within the enterprises, it is common that it is mostly men who get the right to go to courses thus acquiring the formal skills for advancement.

The literature on women's questions in Finnish is almost nil, which is a heavy drawback for the women's movement.

The Situation of the Women's Movement in Finland and its Relation to Political Parties

The women's movement in Finland is very small and concentrated in the capital Helsinki, where there are two groups: the bigger is Union and the smaller Feministerna. Union is an old organization with an honorable past - its members fought for women's right to vote so effectively that Finnish women were the first in Europe to get the right to vote. Union has a women's house in the center of Helsinki, where all foreign sisters are welcome. Its rules do not involve socialism and at least for the moment the majority of us does not consider it wise to pass on new rules. The majority considers it valuable also to attract women who, at the time of joining, have not taken any definite political stand. We feel that this does not mean a blanking out of the means and goals of the movement. In fact there has never been any hard battles on the question of means and goals. The goal we fight for is, in the first place, women's right to work, which naturally involves state planning. We fight for women's right to take part in the decision-making processes at their work, which involves a shifting over of power from the employers to the employees. We fight for the right of every child of working mothers and fathers to communal child care.

On the International Women's Day 1977 we had a demonstration in which only 40 women took part. With the social democrat and the communist women's organizations and Feministerna we passed a statement on women and unemployment. During the spring we have had discussions and have put out a statement demanding better services in the birth clinics (more anesthestists).

At the moment we are considering the possibility of opening a women's book shop in autumn. In autumn many consciousness raising groups are going to start. These groups have more concrete themes than the American groups:apart from talking about personal problems, they discuss work and power questions and practical solutions. Many women working in the women's movement are members of left wing parties. In Finland there is no realistic ground for any separate political work outside parties due to our special geographical situation. This naturally does not mean that women working in the women's movement and being at the same time members of the left wing parties accept their parties' often overt chauvinist policies, but a that they feel that the work has to be done on two fronts: one within the women's movement and one within the parties. Within the left parties there are factions with different analytical and strategical outlooks.

As our constitution is one of Europe's most reactionary, giving one fifth of the parliament the right to vote down any progressive laws, it is necessary that the whole left cooperates if there is any progress at all to be made.

As to the left wing parties' attitude towards the autonomous women's movement, it is ambivalent as everywhere. Especially the extreme left within the communist party is critical.

There are positive signs in the air which show that the Finnish women will not stand oppression any more and will join our forces in greater numbers than hitherto. In autumn we are going to make contacts with women in various parts of Finland to urge them to start new groups on their own.

Kari Mattila
UNIONI Bulevardi11A
00120 Helsinki
Finland