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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.
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