At 34, the world’s youngest female state leader, MarinSanna is, for many, a symbol of progression and hope.
It’s not cold enough in Finland. Everyone is saying it. It’s on the news in my hotel when I wake up – the glaciers are melting, faster than expected. I’m sweating in my thermals. In Kesäranta, the grand 19th-century villa that has been the official residence of Finnish prime ministers since 1919, Dimitri, Sanna Marin’s trusted young adviser, gazes out at the churning Baltic and says, gloomily, “This should be ice right now.
Emma will soon stop attending daycare, to minimise the risk of Marin contracting the virus, and the Finnish Prime Minister will be faced with the same problem as many millions of women around the world: how to work and homeschool a child.But Marin’s face lights up when she talks about Emma. “She doesn’t understand any of this. Once, she was looking at a magazine, and there was a picture of me, and she said, ‘Stupid magazine! Not mother.
Sanna Marin arrives for a European Union Summit at the Europa building in Brussels on December 12, 2019.The news reverberated around the globe, with images of her coalition circulating widely on social media. How could it not? Less than a quarter of the world’s parliamentarians are female – and yet here was a government where four out of five party leaders were women aged under 35. Finnish politics, often overlooked – coalitions are seldom glamorous – suddenly seemed rare and exciting.
Finland has a reputation for being as crisp and clean as freshly fallen snow. The UN ranks it the happiest country in the world. It is the third-best place to be a woman. Mothers have access to high quality, state subsidised day-care centres. It sounds miraculous. So, do they have it all sewn up? “Finland is not a dream world,” Marin says. “We also have problems.”
“We have totally different values,” she sighs of her opposition. “That’s no secret. But we live in a democracy and people have the right to vote for whoever they want. It’s our job to give people hope and a way to go to a better future.” How, I ask? “We have to understand the reasons populism is growing,” she says. “One of the reasons is how we handled the Euro crisis, with austerity policies. People lost their jobs, and their hope for the future. This is the ground where populism grows.
After the separation, her mother found love with another woman. Marin praises Finland’s tolerance, but acknowledges that same-sex relationships were barely discussed in the 1990s, let alone recognised as equal under the law. “There was a silence about it,” she says. “And I felt that silence. It didn’t feel good, growing up, that there was this silence.” Money was tight – Marin is the first person to go to university from her family and worked in a shop to support herself.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Coronavirus and pregnancy, Social workers, Calamity JaneThe fictional story of a 15 year old girl’s sexual relationship with her English teacher – author Kate Elizabeth Russell talks about setting her first novel against a real life backdrop of the MeToo era: 📻
Read more »
BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Working From Home, Domestic Violence, Useful TechAre you a mother who's juggling working from home and taking care of the children? We hear some much needed advice COVID19 💭: 📻
Read more »
BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Women's Football, Covid-19 - Impact on Children, The Lives of Houses, Loneliness and IsolationHints and tips on how to combat loneliness and look after your mental health – we hear from endlonelinessuk and MindCharity: 📻
Read more »
Viktor Orbán ditches mayor plan amid claims of coronavirus power grabHungary’s prime minister criticised for inefficient and unworkable measures
Read more »
Weeks-old baby died after contracting coronavirus may be world's youngest victimMetro.co.uk: News, Sport, Showbiz, Celebrities from Metro
Read more »