Recent trends and future prospects in gender equality

Equality between men and women is widely thought to be advanced in Finland. Women are well educated and their labour market participation is high, while strict equality legislation has been in force for many years. However, women still earn less than men, the labour market is strongly segregated on gender lines, and young women face particular difficulties in finding open-ended employment. This article provides an overview of the gender equality situation in 2003.

Women in Finland have traditionally had an active role and strong legal rights in society. In 1906, Finland became the first country in Europe to give women the right to vote in national elections and the first country in the world to give them right to be electoral candidates. Since then, women’s labour market participation has risen close to men’s level and women are nowadays on average better educated than men. Given this background, it is surprising how traditional the division of labour still is, with the labour market strongly divided into typically male and female jobs and occupations. Approximately 65% of women work in occupations in which at least 70% of employees are women. Only 20% of women work in occupations in which there are equal shares of men and women. The share of women is especially high in public services (76% in 2000) as well as in private services (68%). In industry, women’s share is only 31%.

Employment patterns

In Finland, the labour market participation rate of women (72.8%) is almost as high as that of men (76.2%). In contrast to many other countries, most women (83%), even mothers of small children, mainly work full time. One of the reasons for this is the extensive system of public childcare and school meals that make it possible for both parents to work full time. Another reason is the tax system, whereby both husband and wife are taxed separately. Unlike countries where taxation is based on family income and high tax progression makes it rational for women to stay home, the Finnish system has offered incentives for women to be active on the labour market. Furthermore, the parental leave system gives mothers of young children better opportunities to keep their job while spending a few years at home and so makes it easier to return working life. Paid parental leave entitlement (FI0111101N) for the parents of newly born babies is 263 days. For the first 105 days, parental allowance is paid to the mother and for the next 158 days it can be paid either to the mother or the father. Parents can also take childcare leave with full employment security to look after a child under the age of three, though both parents cannot be on full-time leave at the same time. After the leave, employees are entitled to return to their previous job or a comparable position.

Part of the reason for the high level of full-time work, however, is the fact that traditionally there have been few part-time jobs available in Finland. Only 17% of women and 7% of men work in part-time jobs (2001 figures). For economic reasons, too, full-time work has often been the only alternative. One of the problems on the Finnish labour market seems to be that part-time work is allocated in a wrong way. Those who would like to work full time find only part-time work and those willing to have part-time work have to work full time. According toStatistics Finland, about 35% of part-time workers would like to have a full-time job (FI0305202F).

Since the serious depression in the Finnish economy in the early 1990s, employers have increasingly used fixed-term employment contracts. This has been common in the public sector and female-dominated healthcare work especially. Young people and young women particularly have difficulties in finding an open-ended employment contract at present. About 20% of women and 13% of men (in 2000) work in fixed-term employment. Although renewal of fixed-term contracts is normal, the system causes uncertainty. There is also evidence that those on fixed-term contracts are often paid less and treated in many ways worse than those on open-ended contracts. (FI0101173F).

There are no major differences in the unemployment rates of men and women. At the moment, the rate is around 9% for both genders. Women become unemployed more often then men, but long-term unemployment is more common among men than women.

Wage differential is still large

According to some recent studies, the average wage level of women is 76.4% of that of men. Most of the gap can be explained by differences in background or tasks, but about 6 percentage points of the wage differential can not be explained by anything other than discrimination (FI0306201N). Generally, women work more in public sector jobs and men in private sector jobs, and wage formation in these sectors is totally different. The collective wage bargaining system has tried to balance development in different sectors from time to time through'loyal agreements', whereby workers in export sectors accept lower wage increases than their employers could afford to pay. However, in economic booms especially, wage growth in these sectors has accelerated so much due to wage drift that their wage development has proved to be very different from that elsewhere. There have also been efforts to agree on special'equality increments' for low-paid sectors, but the practical importance of these measures has been small. However, collective agreements often contain other issues which are important for gender equality. For instance, in the central incomes policy agreement for 2003-4 it was agreed that the'partial care' leave scheme - whereby parents of young children may reduce their working hours - will be extended to cover the child's first years at school (FI0212103F).

Concrete measures to promote equal pay for men and women include job evaluation exercises that has been developed in cooperation by the social partners since the early 1990s. The aim is to agree on wage criteria and to promote analytical evaluations of different type of tasks in order to find out how much they require different skills (including communication and social skills), the degree of responsibility, stress or other burdens, the working conditions etc. The criteria are agreed together and the evaluations are based on written descriptions. The evaluation group gives each task points that determine the related wage level.

Strict legislative norms on equality

The Act on Equality between Women and Men prohibits gender-based discrimination (FI0308203T) and requires active promotion of equality. It came into force in 1987 and has gone through several amendments since then. It defines discrimination and gives the employee a right to demand compensation for unequal treatment. The Act prohibits treating women and men differently on the basis of sex, treating women differently due to pregnancy or birth or treating women and men differently on the basis of parenthood, family responsibilities or some other reason related to sex. Discrimination in recruitment, when selecting employees for different tasks or training, in working conditions, wages or other terms of employment is prohibited. The Act also deals with sexual harassment. If there is reason to suspect wage discrimination on the basis of sex, workplace employee representatives have an independent right of access to information on the wages and the employment relationship of employees.

Nowadays the Act includes quota provisions, that ensures an equal proportion of women and men in government committees, advisory boards and other corresponding bodies, and municipal bodies, excluding municipal councils. The share of the less represented sex in these bodies must be at least 40%. The Act also obliges employers employing at least 30 people to prepare an annual personnel and training plan, which includes measures to promote further equality between men and women. These measures can also be presented in a separate equality plan. An Ombudsman for Equality monitors the observance of the Act. There is also a Council for Equality, which is a permanent body with advisory status within the state administration. The Council makes proposals and issues statements on the reform of legislation, follows research on gender issues and encourages cooperation among authorities, the social partners and other organisations.

Commentary

There is wide agreement in society on the aim of gender equality, but views on the implementation vary - for instance, among the social partners. The trade unions support regulation by legislation and consider detailed norms and quotas necessary, whereas the employers would prefer less formal measures (FI0212108N). It is important to note that the Equality Act emphasises equality of both men and women. There have been already several court cases where male applicants have receiving compensation after losing out on a job to a less qualified woman.

One of the main reasons for work-related equality problems seems to be the strong segregation of the labour market. As long as men’s wages are largely determined on the market by supply and demand, but women’s wages are largely based on administrative decisions on the public sector, the differences will remain large. Even a shortage of public sector staff, for instance in healthcare, which is forecast in future due to the ageing of population, does not lead to major wage increases in this area. As history shows, only serious structural changes in the economy and occupations, or in the border between public and private sectors, can lead to dramatic changes in gender roles or labour market roles. (Seija Parviainen, Labour Institute for Economic Research)