Finland as a pioneer of gender equality and development cooperation

Finnish expertise in terms of equality is viewed with pride in public discussions, and national excellence has been justified by Finland’s active role as a supporter of women’s rights and equality in global and development politics. Equality has been even nominated as a national export commodity, that Finland has a right and almost even obligation to promote internationally. (Jauhola and Kantola, 2016, p.189.) When Finland faded out development aid and bilateral cooperation during the transition period of Namibia in 2004-2007, Local Cooperation Fund (LCF) became an essential instrument regarding support of civil society, human rights, and good governance (Valjas et al. 2008, pp.4-5).

Due to changed emphasis on civil society support in Namibia after the transition, it is interesting to find out how experts understand “Finnish equality”. How do the representatives of equality pioneer describe the implementation of equality objectives in their work, especially when trade and economy are increasingly underlined in the relation of these countries, as it is suggested in the evaluation report of Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland? (Valjas et al. 2008, p.6).

Women’s rights and the promotion of gender equality are strong themes in the creation of the image and reputation for Finland internationally. Human rights and development were in the focus earlier in the 90s, and later in 2000 also international security and crisis management came along as main concerns. Previous literature presents critique, that in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, women’s issues are mostly included in development politics and human rights. Consequently, there has been a deficit in the approach of gendered in trade policies. (Jauhola and Kantola, 2016, p.201.)

Equality policies in Finland and the concept of gender equality are often related to an idea of equality as a national project and welfare state model as a system that supports the better position of women. That kind of view presents social and political changes, such as women’s right to vote, as national achievements. (Jauhola and Kantola, 2016, p.189.) Also, Finnish gender equality is often described through constant evolution, which is justified by emphasizing notable milestones in history. Some common examples are for example women’s right to vote the first time in elections in 1906 and 1917, secondly to be able to work in civil service office since 1926, and lastly, women-friendly benefits of the welfare model. (Jauhola, 2012, pp.316-317.) The latest example of the successions would be a notable the high number of women in the government of Finland in 2020 and Sanna Marin as the prime minister (Finnish Government, 2019).

Since the 1990s, political discussion regarding the balance of gender quotas and expertise were notable. In former Finnish Parliament since 1995, decision-makers discussed within three frames: firstly, with quotas, they wanted to find high-skilled experts to take advantage of the best resources and benefit the society. Secondly, quotas were supposed to be temporary to reach gender equality in the close future. Thirdly, in their discussion politicians constructed an image of Finland as part of the Nordic countries of equality. Within the latter,

quota supporters negotiated between the image of equal Finland and speech about deficits regarding equality. (Raevaara, 2005, pp.174-175.)

Raevaara (2005) discovered that approaches of gender equality and building Finnishness intersected within the frame of appreciation of expertise and know-how on equality related questions. Being a qualified expert was part of a national equality project. Gender equality was viewed as a fundamental base of politics and questioning it would have questioned the common rules of the political field. Having expertise and qualified women were arguments to support quotas. It is notable, that expertise and its deficit concerned primarily only women as political actors. Also, a higher number of women in politics was supposed to solve social problems and foster the common good. (Raevaara, 2005, pp.175-177.)

The way to speak and understand equality is always linked to social and historical contexts.

When society changes, so change the manners to speak about equality. Perceptions and ways of speaking reflect and construct social reality. According to previous literature, in the last decades in Finnish public discussions, there was a way to speak about equality as something that already exists, due to previous achievements of the nation. Sometimes other topics, like the economy and other aspects of politics, get more visibility in public than gender equality.

Regarding this view, the idea of already existing and less interesting gender equality leads attitudes easily to thinking that there is no need to do anything to foster equality since Finland already has it. (Holli, 2002, pp.13-14.)

In addition to Holli’s observation of perception on gender equality as already existing, developing countries are sometimes presented through a deficit of something that we have:

equality work is needed to be done more there than here. Jauhola (2012, pp.315-316) calls this kind of view as “a global campaign of justice”. It includes the idea that Finland as a pioneer of equality can internationally show an example and make gender equality promotion as an export commodity of development politics. Through this kind of thinking equality work starts to support economic interests. (Jauhola, 2012, pp.315.) Development can be defined as an objective, social process, and intervention. Firstly, development as an objective is an aspired ideal. Secondly, development as an empirical social process considers it a phenomenon which is already happened or about to happen. Lastly, it is an intervention that aims to good results through rationally planned actions. (Koponen, 2016, pp.63-64.)

Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland defines development policy and development cooperation in the following way: development policies are part of the Foreign and Security policy of Finland and aim to promote development globally and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs has the main responsibility of it. Development cooperation refers to the means to implement the policy. Participants of the cooperation chain with Finland are developing countries, international NGO’s and other international organizations. (Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, 2020).

Women and equality have been in the focus of Finnish development politics at least since the 1970’s and ‘Women in Development’ (WID) -thinking. The idea of WID was that women are missing from the development and they need to be included. Later Gender and Development (GAD) consider gender more broadly in development and stresses that instead of including women into development, gender hierarchies should be questioned. The Council for Gender Equality promoted strongly a new strategy of women’s rights and a sufficient level of expertise on the subject matter in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. As a result, the first strategy came out in 1988. (Koponen, 2005, pp.152-162.) Jauhola and Kantola (2016, p.201) mention the hype of the World Conference on Women in 1995 in Beijing; because of the current equality-friendly ambiance, new gender strategies and instructions were published such as Strategy and Action Plan for Promoting Gender Equality in Finland’s Policy for Developing Countries 2003-2007. Also the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 ”Women, Peace, and Security”, came into an important role in policies approaching women’s rights and equality. Overall, international human rights agreements and implementation have been in a notable position regarding the formation of Finnish equality policies. (Jauhola and Kantola, 2016, pp.201-203.)

Jauhola and Kantola (2016, p.208) suggest that the most notable acts for gender equality would be the formation of The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), European non-discrimination law, and Istanbul convention which aims to prevent and fight violence against women and domestic violence.

Gender mainstreaming was introduced in the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. The Finnish government pledged to the binding agreement and included mainstreaming as part of decision making and development policies. Gender mainstreaming is a public strategy to promote equality, with varied definitions. (Saari, 2012, p.177.)

According to mainstreaming, Cross-Cutting objectives, formerly themes, have almost the same meaning as mainstreaming. Themes and objectives indicate what needs to be mainstreamed, whereas mainstreaming is merely an approach that points out how gender equality should be promoted. (Stocchetti and Kandolin, 2018, p.17.) In interviews mainstreaming and cross-cutting objectives and themes were differentiated, and the interviewees were asked only about mainstreaming. The aim was to find out how experts would promote equality in their work.

Mainstreaming as a cross-cutting strategy in all planning, implementation, and evaluation processes in public administration, is sometimes criticized: since gender perspective is part of everything, it might unintentionally be faded out. It also questions a need for women, and gender-specific projects and institutions. To avoid weakening the aim, the government is committed to doing both mainstreaming, and promote equality by particular acts. (Saari, 2012, p.179.) Due to challenges to define and implement mainstreaming and gender equality it is important to study perceptions of development cooperation experts to understand how they signify the political objective of enhancing gender equality.