London
To Americans and Britons, the Nordic countries have come to represent a near-mythical paradise of gender equality and family harmony, where legions of happy fathers push prams through the streets, relaxed mothers enjoy lengthy paid maternity leaves, and well-nourished children in chunky sweaters glow from their free health care.
But even against that backdrop, one statistic about Finland, a nation of 5.5 million, stands out: According to a recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report, it’s the only country in the developed world where fathers spend more time with school-aged children than mothers, to the tune of eight minutes a day.
The Global Gender Gap report rated Finland the second most equal country in the world in 2016, and the Economist recently rated it the third-best country to be a working mum.
How did Finland get there? And what can the rest of us learn from this small Nordic nation that might accelerate the battle for gender equity in other places? It’s a story of collective action and political will, of a strong tradition of social democracy and an accommodating tax system. But it also boils down to a key difference in how Finland frames the conversation: It’s not about what’s good for adults — it’s about what’s good for children.
“This is a question of gender equality, but it’s more a question of the rights of the child,” says Annika Saarikko, Finland’s minister of family affairs and social services, one of six female ministers out of a cabinet of 11. “the child’s right to spend time with both parents.”
Paternity leave
Finland believes fathers play a crucial role in child development. The government offers fathers nine weeks of paternity leave, during which they are paid 70 per cent of their salary. And to encourage fathers to take advantage the benefit, it recently launched a new campaign called It’s Daddy Time !
While she advocates for fathers, Saarikko is also a fitting example of how mothers in Finland are to a degree liberated from the constraints of motherhood by the country’s supportive policies.
She is 33 and has a three-year-old child in full-time public day care. Her husband also works full-time. “You can be a young woman and a minister here,” she says. “My situation is not abnormal. In Finland it is normal to combine work and family — it’s not easy, but it’s not impossible.”
Finland’s current standing reflects a long legacy of women’s advancement. The country was the second in the world to give women the right to vote, and the first — in 1906 — to give them full political rights. Today, 42 per cent of parliamentarians are women, whereas in the US, women hold just 19.6 per cent of seats in Congress.
“Finland was a poor country where women worked alongside men, and we all had to work together after the war to pay off our debt to the Russians,” says Paulina Ahokas, director of Tampere Hall, the largest concert and convention centre in the Nordic countries. “But women have also been involved in decision-making for a long time — we believe that [leads to] the best decisions.”
The Finnish State strives to provide both mothers and fathers with meaningful social support before their child is even born — and perhaps not coincidentally, the parents the Guardian spoke with in Finland seemed significantly less stressed than their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic.
When parents have a child in Finland, they don’t have to worry about a huge medical bill. A pregnant woman with no complications can expect to be seen between 11 to 15 times before giving birth for free, and the cost of having a baby is nominal.
On top of that, for the past 80 years, the Finnish state has also gifted parents with a “baby box”, filled with newborn essentials including a sleeping bag and playsuits — all in gender neutral colours, of course.
While families can opt to receive €140 (Dh603) instead, 95 per cent of first-timers take the goodies, as they are worth much more.
Hamper of gifts
The baby box has been credited with helping Finland achieve one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world — it saw only 1.7 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2015, compared to the states’ strikingly high rate of 5.82 — not because of the bed itself, but because pregnant women must have a check-up before the end of their fourth month of pregnancy to receive it. “It’s the contact that’s important, not the box,” says Anita Haataja, who works for the Finnish social agency Kela.
Once the baby is born, Finland gives mothers about four months of paid maternity leave and fathers a little more than two months of paid leave. On top of all that, couples can share an additional five-plus months of paid parental leave between them. Even after the parental leave period ends, one parent has the right to stay home, and get “paid” €450 a month, and return to the same job until the child is three years old.
When parents go back to work, the state provides universal day care. At its most expensive, the service costs only €290 a month. For comparison, in the US, full-time child care costs 85 per cent of a family’s median rent in some places.
None of this comes cheap, of course. Taxes account for 44 per cent of Finland’s gross domestic product. So does Finland agree with the American perception that it’s a utopian paradise? Not yet. Minister Saarikko acknowledges. “One of the main barriers we face is the illusion of gender equality,” she says.
But the government is actively working to improve these figures. This year, it launched an International Gender Equality Prize — it will give $180,000 to a person or organisation “that has advanced gender equality in a globally significant way” to donate to the cause of its choice.
—Guardian News & Media Ltd
