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JUHANI ARTTO
HOMEPAGE 2010

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TRADE UNION NEWS
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Has women's position in Finland too good a reputation?

Helsinki (07.04.2008 - Juhani Artto) The position of women in Finland is not as good as elsewhere it has been claimed. This is according to Eija Ailasmaa, who has just been chosen as this year's most influential female business leader in Finland.

In her interview in Talouselämä, the leading business weekly, she adds that she never reveals (to foreigners) this opinion of hers.
"In Finland development is now even going backwards", Ailasmaa laments critically.

Over the last six years she has had a good opportunity to observe the position of women in business life in Europe. During this period Ailasmaa has worked as the CEO of Sanoma Magazines, Europe
's fourth largest magazine publisher.

The company has a strong position in the magazine business in Holland, Finland, Belgium and in several Central and Eastern European countries, Russia included. Sanoma Magazines main office is located in Amsterdam, and the corporate (SanomaWSOY) main office in Helsinki.

According to Talouselämä, Ailasmaa is a celebrity in Holland.
"When a woman leads a company of this size in Holland, it is noted. Here in the Netherlands Finland has a mythically good reputation", is how Ailasmaa sums up Finland's image in Holland where she works most of her time.

In her interview Ailasmaa does not specify what especially makes her so critical towards the gender-related development in Finland. It may be the persistence of the pay gap between men and women. In Finland it is wider than the average in the EU-27. In Finland the women
's euro is only 80 per cent of men's euro, and the government's target is to raise it by 2015 to only 85 per cent.

Holland
's FNV demands minimum quota for women

A few days before Talouselämä published the interview with Ailasmaa the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant published an interview with Agnes Jongerius, the chairwoman of Holland's largest union confederation FNV. Like Ailasmaa, also she is dissatisfied with the provision for women as regards top positions in her own country.

Jongerius demands that the Dutch parliament approve a regulation that would give women, by 2012, a 40 per cent minimum quota of top positions. She is frustrated by employers
' promises to voluntarily enlarge women's provision within the leadership corps. "In the past 25 years it has been clearly demonstrated that women do not get to fill those top positions", Jongerius says.

According to a recent Eurostat study in Holland, one in four top positions are held by a woman. In Finland, this kind of gender inequality seems to be still worse. In the hundred largest stock companies, only 16 per cent of management group members are women, Talouselämä counts.

So, is there not also in Finland a need for a minimum quota of top positions for women?

The last time the issue received some publicity was in 2006. Then Tuula Haatainen, the then minister responsible for equality questions, announced her readiness to initiate minimum quota legislation concerning business organisations unless they voluntarily enlarge women
's provision of top positions. However, her initiative did not receive much support. Neither labour market organisations nor major political parties warmed to the idea of gender-related minimum quota legislation concerning private and public companies.

Norway pioneered quota policy for the business world

Two years ago Norway, as the first country in the world, approved legislation that makes it mandatory for over 460 companies to reserve a large provision of top positions for women. By March 2008 the companies concerned had to adapt to the regulation.

According to Helsingin Sanomat, by mid March all of the concerned stock companies reached the minimum target and only a handful of other concerned companies had still some work to do to fulfil the minimum quotas. Thus, in Norway women
's provision for top positions in business life has jumped to 40 per cent.

FNV
's Jongerius regards the progress made in Norway as being very successful.