Doctors, nurses, firefighters - and pilots - head the list of most respected professions
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By Jaakko Lyytinen
The weekly news magazine Suomen Kuvalehti has again produced its extensive survey of the respect - or lack of it - held for different professions among the Finnish population.
The last time such an assay was carried out was in 2007, and on each occasion since 1991 when the venture was launched, it has been exciting to see if any occupations would threaten the top spots taken by surgeons and other representatives of the medical profession, and equally whether us journalists would leap from the slough of despond and make it into at least the top 250 of the 380 professions listed.
Nothing new to report, really, in 2010.
"Journalist (Press)" is still [ma]lingering down there at #283 (down from 273rd three years ago), and the top 10 - or 11 in fact, since there was nothing to choose between two of them - includes seven different varieties of doctor, a firefighter, a midwife, a nurse, and another standard highflier, the commercial pilot.
There is a certain element of surprise in this last one, however, given that the Finnair management has very publicly berated its cockpit staff over their enormous salaries and very generous fringe benefits.
These critical voices seem to have done nothing to erode the public's respect for the pilots (now 10th, up one place), and their position does not appear to have been rocked even by industrial action that left the planes grounded late last year.
Things were not so rosy for the stevedores, mind you.
The Suomen Kuvalehti survey was taken just as the harbour workers had begun their own two-week strike in March, and it cost them dear - down 86 places from 2007 to a lowly 330th, not so far above the ultimate "dregs professions" of fur-farmer, model, TV licence inspector, telephone salesperson, and door-to-door salesman.
The stevedores' fall from grace was the greatest of all, but Finnish MPs (down 52 places to 320th) and TV-journalists (down 36 places to 253rd) don't have much to brag about, either.
It almost seems to suggest that sleaze (the long-running election financing furore, for a start) has an equally negative effect on the public perceptions of both those who are involved and those whose job it is to report on it.
But what is the common denominator among the professions that regularly take the top placings in a survey of this nature?
The "fear factor" is a good starting point. The degree with which a profession garners respect seems directly related to the concrete way in which lives can be saved, and in the case of firemen, the risk to life and limb involved in saving them.
The Suomen Kuvalehti study was carried out in March, before the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland began to strut its stuff.
Had the respondents been polled after the ash-cloud chaos got started, the chances are the brave pilots might have overtaken even some of the physicians above them in the Top 10.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 23.5.2010
Translator's Note: Just for reference, translators slipped a bit in the SK rankings, dropping 14 places and out of the Top 100 to 108th, while our colleagues the interpreters fared a bit better. They were 75th, but also lost ground relative to 2007. Still, we've got a long way to fall until we meet the journalists and the Members of Parliament...
JAAKKO LYYTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
jaakko.lyytinen@hs.fi
Doctors, nurses, firefighters - and pilots - head the list of most respected professions