In 1906, the Grand Duchy of Finland was the first country in Europe to grant women the right to vote in national elections. Nearly 80 years later, a special legislation on equality between women and men (609/1986) came into force. Despite that, there is a still lot of work to be done towards perfect gender equality in Finland.
Journalism has been a profession dominated by males for a long time. Even the UJF was called the Union of Finnish Newspapermen until 1993; however, five years later in 1998, the majority of the union members were female. Female participation in the trade is increasing, as over 70 per cent of student members are women (Journalists Union, 2020). The theme of gender equality among journalists became increasingly stronger in the 1980s and 1990s. However, gender-specific practices of the trade were not properly challenged at the time, and that is why the discussion continues even today (Kurvinen, 2019).
The editors-in-chief of leading news media organisations – two of them female– noticed and highlighted the significant increase of the number of female journalists in the country, especially among newcomers. From a management perspective, gender equality in Finnish newsrooms had been taken care of. Salaries and working conditions in the same field were similar for everybody, and opportunities to build one’s career were described as equal. However, trade union representative pointed out that on an average, female journalists make less money than male journalists. This may be partly because young journalists tend to have lower salaries than older ones, but also because of stereotypical divisions of work:
On a larger scope, things are quite equal, the situation is comparable to Finnish society in general. Then again, whereas the normal women’s euro is 82 cents, for female journalists it’s 96 cents. But still, when there is an interesting story abroad the older generation of leaders tend to send male reporters to do the job because the men are considered better reporters. Stereotypical divisions also exist, e.g women do stories on interior design while men cover sports, typically. There is still a lot of work to be done in this area, even though the challenges are connected to different age groups among the leaders, the older groups of leaders aren’t equally equal in their leadership (UJF president, 2020).
