CEDAW Seminar, Helsinki, October 1, 2014
Forward or Backwards? Women's Rights in Finland
Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari,
CEDAW member; Director of Rackman Center, Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan Univ. Israel: ruth.kaddari@gmail.com
First, many thanks to the initiators and organizers of this seminar: the MOFA, the MOSAH,
the HRC, and the people behind them.
I am truly honored to be here today. I considered it a great privilege to be the rapporteur for
Finland in February, and I am grateful for this opportunity to learn more from you, and to
share some of my thoughts and observations with you. I know that I have already gained so
much from these couple of days, and I really hope that my very modest contribution to your
work and efforts will be useful. I also want to take this opportunity and express much
appreciation to the people (mostly women) whom I have met here, who are dedicated to
improving the lives of women in Finland, and to making Finland better for the whole society.
I met impressive, highly professional committed people, and their daily work is indeed
commendable.
I was asked to offer my perspective on how Finland fares with respect to CEDAW
implementation, in relation to other countries.
One way of starting, that really summarizes it all, is to quote the taxi driver who drove me
yesterday from the airport. I took the conversation to discuss women in politics here,
confirming that women's equal participation in the public sphere is taken for granted, and
then he said: "Women have good life in Finland, especially compared to other parts of the
world. Perhaps it could be better, but it's good".
So I guess I'll focus on what could be better. Frankly, I don't think I'm going to say anything
you don't already know. It would be extremely presumptuous of me to think I can offer new
insights to those of you who are obviously experts on women and on gender equality in
Finland. However, precisely because of my unique position, perhaps I can make some
valuable observations that other cannot.
I come here today as an outsider who has had the privilege of being provided with very
concise and targeted information - and this is perhaps the proper place to make an
interesting observation about the role of the CEDAW experts and their (or rather our ) ability
to delve into country-specific situation and cases of which we never visited and for which we
never had prior knowledge or understanding, and within a few days we become the
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authoritative source for assessing that country's achievements (or lack thereof) within the
area of women's position. At first glance this seems impossible, even ridiculous. However,
upon deeper reflection, it is precisely this very lack of prior understanding and knowledge,
which also means no existing prejudice, together with our vast comprehensive comparative
overview of the situation of women all over the globe, together with the succinct
information provided to us by numerous sources, which indeed make us suitable evaluators
for this purpose, even if some of it is superficial. And so as such an observer attempting an
overall evaluation, I can start with some overall observations:
First, Finland is of course a champion of women's rights. After all, it was the first country to
have full women's suffrage – both the right to cast a vote and to stand for election (1906);
you had the first woman to serve as Minister of Defense; and you probably hold the world
record now in terms of women's share in the Government; and there's certainly more to
boast, especially within the public political sphere.
Second, you have indeed taken the CEDAW (like all other HRTB) process quite seriously, as
evident for instance by the Inter-governmental network set to examine all COBs, by the
number of initiatives (legislative and policy) that were undertaken as a direct result from the
previous and the current dialogues [e.g. the Action Plan to Combat FGM; the criminalization
of sexual harassment; the upcoming revision of the Act on Equality between Women and
Men as part of the overall reform of the Non-Discrimination Act (which will add genderidentity and gender expression as prohibited grounds of discrimination as well as amend the
Equality Plan); and more]. And last but not least, it is evident by this very Seminar (for which
you had indeed committed yourself during the dialogue itself). This actually justifies a couple
of more sentences: much of the CEDAW process, especially the dialogue, can cynically be
described as "going through the motions", i.e. everyone knows his or her part, questions are
asked politely, sometimes they are answered and often not, and the delegation can go home
satisfied, having filled its role. This seminar, though, is anything but "going through the
motions". It is not prescribed by anybody, you were not required to hold it, in other words
convening and having this seminar is indeed a sign of taking CEDAW seriously.
HOWEVER – you can do much better than that. And before I jump into the water, I want to
clarify two things: First, when we evaluate the States parties to the Convention, we always
try to be country-specific, and that also means to hold each country to the standard that's
appropriate in each case. And what I'm going to say here reflects the higher standard to
which Finland is being held. Second, much of my critic can probably be shoved off with
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reference to the budgetary crisis and the overall cut-downs and overall austerity measures,
however – as I was saying yesterday – even in times of crisis and cut-downs, the decisions on
where and how much to spend are political; priority setting is a political process and it
reflects ideology and commitment (or lack of one). And lastly, I apologize in advance that I'm
not going to use the usual UN diplomatic language, and will allow myself to be rather direct
and straightforward.
For one thing, you could have addressed many more of our COBs. By 'addressing' I mean
actually doing something about all those issues of concern that the Committee pointed out,
and suggested what needs to be done so as to improve. I counted at least five places where
previous COBs were mentioned in the current ones, meaning that the situation remained
unchanged, and of continuing concern to the Committee. Violence against women is
probably the most glaring of them (COBs paras 18-19), but there are others: lack of a
national machinery (COBs para 13(b)); the need to limit mediation in DV cases (COBs para
18(d)); prevent wrongful dismissals in pregnancy related cases (COBs para 26); address
specific hardships of women with disabilities (COBs para 32). This is somewhat
embarrassing. Not that Finland stands alone on this pattern, but once again, we could expect
more.
So I want to expand a little on what I refer to as Some alarming disregards:

The continuous and even growing use of mediation in "close relationships" cases
despite previous COBs, despite clear instructions in the Action Plan for Gender
Equality 2012-2015 to reduce it. It may be worthwhile to read carefully the language
used in our current COBs (para 18):
"The Committee is, however, concerned… (d) That mediation and conciliation procedures are
increasingly employed in domestic violence cases, notwithstanding recommendations in the
Government Programme and the Government Action Plan for Gender Equality 2012-2015 to
limit its use, and notwithstanding the previous concerns of the Committee
(CEDAW/C/FIN/CO/6, para. 15) that such procedures may lead to the revictimization of
women who have suffered violence;"

The continuous lack of a coordinating mechanism to manage the whole genderequality architecture. Here, though, I must enter a reservation: interestingly, one
thing I did understand from the "crash course" that I received here on Finnish
gender equality apparatus is that what seems from the outside like an extremely
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complex and totally inoperative apparatus may in fact be very manageable to those
within and may function quite efficiently.

But if the lack of a coordinating mechanism is less relevant for the general gender
equality structure, this is no doubt very problematic in the area of prevention of
VAW, as reflected in both the previous and the current COBS:
"The Committee remains concerned… at the lack of an effective institutional mechanism to
coordinate, monitor and assess actions at the governmental level to prevent and address this
scourge." (CEDAW/C/FIN/CO/6 para 15)
"The Committee is, however, concerned… (b)That there is no effective institutional
mechanism to coordinate, monitor and assess measures at the government level to prevent
and tackle violence against women;" (CEDAW/C/FIN/CO/7 para 18(b))

The continuous lack of recognition of intersectional discrimination, i.e. the
recognition of the concept of multiple forms of discrimination. Apparently the
current envisaged legislative reform does not seem to offer a satisfactory answer
that really reflects a full understanding of the concept of compound or intersectional
discrimination, but rather a more technical procedural solution.

The simple solution to the problem of dismissals (or non-renewal of fixed-term
employment contracts) of women returning from long parental leaves, i.e. to
instruct keeping their jobs for them for a period of six months after returning from
maternity leave – is not even on the table! Once again, this was raised in the
previous COBs, and regrettably we had to repeat it this time. This too is an example
of a concern that can be dealt with and amended without the need to allocate
money. In other words, it's not a question of resources, it's a question of attitude
and commitment.
I want to now turn to issues that I termed Some disappointing surprises, which may have
not received such a reproachful attitude in our COBs, but were definitely addressed in them,
and which for me – when starting to prepare for the dialogue in February – indeed came as
disappointing surprises, and in a sense as a disillusionment.

The overwhelming majority, in fact close to 90% of parental leaves taken by mothers
and not fathers! Even a quick look at the official publication of Statistics Finland
reveal the extremely gendered division of parental roles. One small table tells the
whole story in a nutshell – table 10.1: when children come, the work patterns
change dramatically for both women and men, but in completely opposite
directions. While both women and men considerably increase their total work time
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from a little over 40 hours per week to more than 60 hours per week, men's gainful
employment increases from 27 to 37 hours, women's gainful employment in fact
decreased from 24.5 to less than 18 hours, while their time spent on domestic work
more than doubled, from less than 20 hours to almost 44 hours a week!

Finland has one of the highest gender-segregated workforce within the EU!

When marriage ends, intangible assets (namely all those work-related benefits
which represent every working person's financial security) are not being regarded as
marital property, and are not divided upon divorce! Even the European Commission
mentioned the overall risk of poverty for women over 65 as one of the two most
alarming issues for Finland; this is of course a direct result from the lack of inclusion
of those resources within the marital property to be equally divided when family
relations dissolve. This is in direct contradiction to the Committee's recent General
Recommendation No.29, on the Economic Consequences of Family Relations and
their Dissolution (CEDAW/C/GC/29;
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/comments/CEDAW-C-52-WP-1_en.pdf), which
clearly requires the equal division of these assets as well as consideration of the
differences in men's and women's earning capacity and financial welfare when
constructing the matrimonial property regime.
I would ask you now to think a little longer on these three points that I just mentioned. I
grouped them under the title of "unpleasant/disappointing surprises", as they were not the
very first topics to jump out when I started preparing for the dialogue; rather they are an
expression of the underlying reality. And they share a common thread: they reflect the very
private sphere, the family, and the family-market interaction on the level of gendereddivision of work, and its economic consequences. I believe that they are an indication of
what lies beneath the surface of apparent equality.
So these were some of the more conspicuous issues that are rather "country specific", as we
refer to them.
I want to turn now to address two major areas of concern, which are perhaps the most
alarming, but I left them for the end because they are unfortunately not at all unique to
Finland. In fact, here I think I can say that we see a recurring pattern which is found in many
of the developed countries: The recurring pattern:
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
Constant and chronic insufficient funding: this of course reflects that while there
may be an understanding of the problems, and the needed solutions are known,
there is no real commitment. Real commitment would have been translated into
actual allocation of money. This lack of funding is honestly admitted in the
Governmental Report to CEDAW: after describing the National Action Plan to
Reduce Violence against Women 2010-2015, the Report continues "No budget is
attached to the Action Plan" (CEDAW/C/Fin/7 para 65). Thus, unbelievable as this
may sound, there is no 24/7 hotline in Finland, and the severe inadequacy of
shelters remains. Interestingly, the chronic lack of funding seems to be an overall
pattern in this area. As I was leafing through the interesting Human Rights Centre's
report on Human Rights Education in Finland, I happened to come across a familiar
sentence, at p. 22: "There is no specific financial framework for human rights
education."

And last but certainly not least: the slow move towards gender-neutral language,
which I believe is a sign of a broader backlash. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking
about: the usage of such terms as "violence in close relationship"/ "intimate
violence" rather than referring to violence against women, etc. For one thing, this
precludes the possibility of recognizing women's much greater share within victims
of violence and DV. Examples for this abound. Even the opening speech during the
CEDAW dialogue demonstrates this: the Head of the delegation refers to "family
killings", "violence between spouses or partners", and to "battered family
members". Are there no battered women in Finland? Are men and women equally
killed by their partners? How many women are killed by their spouses each year in
Finland? Strangely enough, this is a difficult question to answer. Statistics Finland
does not contain data on the crucial question of the number of women killed by
their spouses each year. This lacuna obscures reality, it serves an overall denial and
ignoring of the female face of victims of DV.
This process takes place in much of the developed countries, and even is some developing
ones, and is perhaps even more evident in the Nordic countries, but I think it finds in Finland
a more receptive background. It is also related to the phenomenon of backlash coming from
men's groups claiming to be as discriminated against and as victimized by violence as
women. Now I am not denying that men can also be victims of discrimination, and that there
are cases of women's violence against men, but even the incomplete statistics in Statistics
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Finland make it clear: less than 10% of the suspects of manslaughter, and less than 4% of
suspects of child sexual abuse, are women.
Let us make this very clear: Violence within the family is not gender neutral. It has a very
gender specific face, and that is the female face. To talk about domestic violence in gender
neutral terms is almost like talking about pregnancy and childbirth in gender neutral terms.
I see a connection between all these issues that I elaborated on. There is a common thread
here: when I take together the ongoing lack of resources allocated to critical areas of
women's rights; the reluctance to intervene in the private sphere that translates into
maintaining the resort to mediation even in cases of DV, as well as the lack of understanding
of the concept of marital community property; the growing resort to gender neutral
language; and more – I am afraid that what emerges is an indication of denial of the very
pervasive nature of patriarchy which does exist even within such a progressive, liberal and
indeed egalitarian society as Finland. Without recognizing this, the direction that emerges is
backwards, not forward.
Once again, this can be demonstrated in the phenomenon of the gender neutral language:
Let us make this clear: the dangers inherent in the resort to gender neutral language go way
beyond the specific area in which it is being used. The ramifications are much broader than
that. By diluting the gendered nature of discrimination, by camouflaging the reality of the
persistent women's vulnerability in many areas we in fact enable those cut-downs that
disproportionately affect women, we legitimize the non-segregation of data along gender
lines or the non-inclusion of such crucial data in formal statistics as mentioned before, we
allow for closing of gender studies programs in academia – because if gender no longer
matters there is no need to have such programs…
In short, we move away from CEDAW, because what makes CEDAW such a significant
document is its dualistic approach: maintaining both gender neutrality and gender
specificity, that's the trick – knowing when each path is appropriate, and balancing between
the two.
I am afraid Finland is moving away from the proper balance, and I hope it is found again
soon, so that Finland can go back on the right track and be once again a leader in women's
rights. I am confident this can happen, and perhaps this seminar today is the turning point.
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