The leading newspaper in Finland, HS, has monitored the gender balance of its website content since late 2017 (Yläjärvi & Ubaud, 2018). Public service media company Yle followed its example in January 2018, as part of their internal gender equality programme. In 2020, 17 newspapers as well as Yle News in Finnish and Swedish are using the same gender equality tracker developed by the Swedish company, Prognosis.
For the past 150 years, the share of female interviewees in Finnish media has been close to one-third (Pettersson, 2018). HS has promised twice (in 2014 and 2018) to increase the number of female voices in their publication, but without lasting results. In 2018, Yle was able to increase the share of female interviewees from 30 per cent to 43 per cent, but challenges remain for reasons like the Finnish political elite being predominantly male (Erho, 2019).
In 2007, the Institute of Languages of Finland recommended the use of gender-neutral expressions in the media. Ten years later, in September 2017, Aamulehti announced that it would replace traditional gender-specific job titles, such as chairman or fireman, with gender-neutral titles. The reception to all this has been mixed. Aamulehti received an award from the Council for Gender Equality and the National Council of Women of Finland; however, no other newspaper has publicly followed their example. It has, additionally, been criticised for using newly coined gender-neutral job titles instead of official titles, some of which have a specific legal basis.
