Back to New World Finn Home Page
Hilkka Pietilä Talks About Role Of Women In Finland
by Aili Mari Tripp
Finland
has been building the welfare system so that in practice the state shares
with all families both the expenses and the workload of having children. Therefore,
the state is, in a way, a third parent in every family, Hilkka Pietila told
an audience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on April 28, 2003. She
was describing the ways in which the Finnish welfare state has made it possible
for women to make significant advances toward equality in the workplace by
subsidizing childcare, granting generous maternity leave, and providing other
social benefits to the population at large. This model differs radically
from the U.S. system that stigmatizes the population drawing welfare benefits.
Hilkka Pietilä was visiting the University of Wisconsin Madison
campus in May, 2003, as part of the Visiting Scholars Program of the
Havens Center in conjunction with the Women & Citizenship Research Circle,
and the Sociology Department. She gave several talks and seminars, including
one on “Feminism in a Global Agenda: Women and the United Nations.”
In her talk she highlighted the role of women in politics both historically
through the activities of the Martta Association and the Naisasialiitto
Unioni (Feminist Union) that emerged in the late 19th century and the Society
of 9 formed in 1966. She pointed out that not only was Finland the first
country in Europe to grant women the right to vote in 1906, but it was also
the first country in the world to grant women full political rights, which
meant that women could also run for office. Finland was the first country
to have both a woman president and prime minister. Three years ago Tarja Halonen
was elected president, this winter Anneli Jäätteenmäki became
Prime Minister, heading a coalition of the Center Party, the Social Democrats
and the Swedish People’s Party. Ms. Jäätteenmäki
appointed a cabinet in which half the ministers are women. Morever, the
new parliament has 37.5% female seats (75 out of 200; which means that Finland
is ranked third internationally in its level of female legislative representation.
(Jäätteenmäki subsequently was forced to step down from the
Prime Ministerial position.)
Hilkka Pietilä is a well-known figure in Finland, primarily because of
her leadership role in the Finnish United Nations Association, of which she
was Secretary General from 1963-1990. She also served as the Vice President of
the World Federation of United Nations Association and has served on its executive
committee.
In Finland, Pietilä is known as a peace activist and has been a member
of the Core Group of Women for Peace in Finland since 1980. She was also
a leader in the movement that resisted Finland’s entry into the European
Union. She is an opinion maker who writes often in Finnish papers and
magazines. Pietilä is an independent scholar who writes from her
home in Laajasalo in Helsinki.
Outside of Finland, Hilkka Pietila is a prominent figure in many international
feminist circles. She has attended all the United Nations conferences on women
beginning with the 1975 conference in Mexico, followed by the conferences
in Copenhagen, Nairobi and Beijing.She is presently one of the driving forces
in trying to get the United Nations to commit to a fifth conference on women,
which she believes is vital in order to keep the momentum around pressuring
governments to adopt pro-women policies, Hilkka Pietilä explains.
Pietilä has been a member of Finnish delegations to countless UN conferences
and served as an advisory member of the Finnish delegation to the UN General
Assembly for over a decade. She helped push through key resolutions at
the 1979 UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development in Vienna
and the third General Conference of the UN Industrial Development Organization
in 1980. These resolutions emphasized that programs adopted by these
conferences must apply equally to men and women.
Pietilä is author of many books and monographs, including Making Women
Matter: The Role of the United Nations which she wrote together with Jeanne
Vickers. She also authored Engendering the Global Agenda: A Success Story
of Women and the United Nations and most recently Mikä Meitä
Yhdistää, Ihmisyys ja perusarvot: (What Unites Us, Humanity and
Basic Values).
Pietilä grew up in a farming community of Kiikka in southwestern Finland. She
received an MA degree in Nutrition and Household Economics from the University
of Helsinki in 1956 and later worked for the National Commission of the UN
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Finland. Thus it was was through
the UN that she became exposed to the overwhelming dimensions of global hunger.
She was astounded by prevalence of these preventable problems of malnutrition
and starvation and how little the world cared. This early experience
piqued her interest in international politics, which later evolved into new
concerns about the status of women around the world.
Hilkka Pietilä is passionate about her mission to promote women’s
equality. She is deeply committed to working for fundamental changes in women’s
status through international fora like the United Nations. She speaks
with rare conviction about her vision of states incorporating the norms of
caring and of economies not solely driven by profits but by values that guarantee
basic needs for all.
About the author: Aili Mari Tripp is a professor of political science
and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She directs
the Women’s Studies Research Center. Her parents and sisters live
in Lahti and Hartola in Finland.
In 1999, the New World Finn published a series of articles by Pietilä
about the Finnish welfare state.
Excerpt from Yes! magazine, ©2002 Positive Futures Network
The Finnish Way
by Hilkka Pietilä
Finland has gone
from being a poor country early in the 20th century to ranking tenth in the
world in life expectancy, education, and income.
The common belief is that a country must first become rich, and then it can
provide welfare for its people. The history of the Nordic societies tells
a different story; here, wealth has been built by building welfare for people.
This success was built on a notion of welfare entirely different from welfare
as understood in the United States. In the US “being on welfare”
is humiliating, and welfare benefits often depend on the recipient’s
relationship to something or someone else. What is radically different about
the Finnish system is that here welfare benefits and services are rights that
everyone living permanently in the country is individually entitled to. Finnish
people have economic, social, and political citizenship.
For women, it has proved particularly important that social benefits and services
belong to everyone without distinction as to sex, marital status, employment,
race, or nationality. Thus Finnish women are entitled to enjoy their social
entitlements whether or not they are married or employed.
This social welfare system is based on a long heritage of democracy, social
justice, and equality, and a sense of collective responsibility for the well-being
of the people. The workers’ movement has been strong in the Nordic countries
since the beginning of the 20th century. But ever since 1906, when Finland
became the first country in the world to grant women the vote and full political
rights, the most important force in building the welfare system has been Finnish
women.
In 1899, when the majority of Finns were living in poverty, a group of women
established the Martha Organization to advance the country’s economic
and cultural life. The strategy was to mobilize educated women—often
teachers and home economists—who volunteered to visit women in their
rural homes and teach them about childcare, cooking, housekeeping, handicrafts,
raising animals, growing vegetables and fruits, using berries, mushrooms,
and wildlife from the forests, and fish from the thousands of lakes.
The movement helped women earn their own income; otherwise, the husband often
held the family finances totally in his hands. As the skills, knowledge, and
income of rural women grew, their status, self-confidence, and respect rose.
This “Martha method” improved the health and well-being of children
and families, and helped to build the early foundations for the welfare society.
The results showed, for instance, in rapidly declining birth rates and infant
mortality and rapidly rising life expectancy.