Conservative women MPs’ constructions of gender equality in Finland

This is a co-authored paper with Milja Saari (University of Helsinki), milja.saari@helsinki.fi Feminist research on gender and politics in Finland suggests that left-wing parties in power have been important for advancing feminist demands. Traditionally, left wing parties have had women friendly policies in place in the form of internal party quotas, have been more aligned with feminist discourses about women’s interests and issues, and have had higher political representation of women in the parliament. Women MPs in the conservative parties, however, play a crucial role as shapers of gender equality discourse and policy in the country. In recent years, women’s parliamentary representation in the conservative National Coalition Party has come to parallel that of left wing parties, and, furthermore, Finland’s two female prime ministers have come from the conservative Centre Party in the 2000s. The Finnish women’s political party organizations have a long history of cross-party co-operation among in the parliament and in the civil society. This has ensured a certain degree of consensus surrounding women’s issues and interests – a hegemonic discourse about gender equality – and a learning process for those coming into the context from ‘outside’. Some issues, however, including the economy or childcare, fall outside this consensus pointing towards deep ideological differences between constructions of women’s interests. Notably, this divide does not always follow the traditional left right divide as illustrated by the uneasy position of the Green party on this axis. Rather it points to the need to further analyze and to complicate the landscape of political parties in the country. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the political and discursive space that the right wing parties offer for their female MPs in representing women’s issues and interests. By drawing upon feminist discursive institutionalism, the paper seeks to analyze both the discourses that these women put forward about representing women’s issues and interests and the institutional spaces for political action that the parties offer for them. The paper focuses on the highly political process that took place around the country’s first ever Government Report on Gender Equality published in 2010 that both analyses past governments’ policies and sets blueprints for future gender policy. The rich empirical data consists of interviews, parliamentary debates and committee hearings that enable an analysis of the controversies that surrounded the policy making process and the constructions of gender and gender equality in the report.