Sexist wannabe alpha-male, MP

A number of women working in Parliament believe that some of the male MPs have been behaving improperly. How do the honourable members respond to the charge?

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NOTE: The Council for Mass Media in Finland (JSN), an organisation which evaluates complaints of lapses in journalistic practice, ruled against Helsingin Sanomat over this article in March 2008, following complaints by five of the seven MPs referred to in the text. A link to the March 20th IntEd article reporting the JSN decision is included below.
     
      By Tanja Aitamurto
     
      Men from the provinces, middle-aged and beyond. Sexist wannabe alpha-males. "The fish-finger moustache crowd".
      These are some of the terms used by female employees in Parliament to describe the Members Behaving Badly in the House.
      Those males who “stare intently at your breasts in the elevator or in the gym”, “make with the smutty stories”, and are full of “yucky innuendo” as the women - and a few men, too - declare.
     
In a report released last week amidst considerable media coverage, female staffers complained of sexual harassment in Parliament.
      And as a rule the party doing the harassing is an MP.
      “When the old bosses of the administration head into retirement, Parliament has every chance of evolving into a modern workplace with proper respect for gender equality, a place that could lead by example and could also shepherd those MPs from the provinces into the new millennium.”
     
According to the women , they get all too used to nudge-nudge, wink-wink talk and improper behaviour.
      “It was only when I changed jobs that I noticed that in a normal office people looked at my face when they were speaking to me, and not at my breasts. And nobody talks dirty around here. I never want to go back to working in Parliament for just that reason.”
     
An exhaustive round of phone-calls to men and women working in the halls of Parliament throws up some interesting information on the behaviour of male MPs.
      More often than not, there is a simple equation: the older the man, the worse the behaviour.
      Younger Members of Parliament generally behave properly and have a grasp of what is civilised flirting and what is not - particularly if the man in question is from an urban background and well-educated into the bargain.
      “Not all men seem to be quite up to speed on the idea of women in the workplace, and they don’t apparently know how to work with and alongside women in 21st century Finland”, one parliamentary aide commented.
     
Many expressed their surprise on discovering the sexist culture that exists within Parliament.
      One woman declared that she had changed her outfits “to cover up a bit more”, in order to avoid leering glances and comments.
      The worst places are the elevators, particularly if one gets stuck in there alone with some man who enjoys shooting his mouth off with dirty comments.
      And the Newspaper Room, where the local "male voice choir" gathers as a rule.
      “In there you have to sit with your ears burning from listening to the smutty stories and organ recitals that these men chuckle over en masse. And they are not necessarily directed towards the women who happen to be present in the room”, another parliamentary assistant reports.
     
Parliament is said to have cultivated a laid-back style of speaking, in which more or less any subject can be turned into a joke.
      Some of the men, a certain core group, cannot keep a satisfactory lid on things, and it gets tacky and tasteless.
      The women have code-names for some of the offenders, such as “The Tits Pervert”.
      According to the women, everyone in Parliament knows who these guys are. There are at least a dozen or so of them.
     
But what do the men say about such claims?
      “Well, yes, of course I look at a beautiful woman who walks by. And I suppose I do use straighforward Ostrobothnian humour; the sort of jokes that you can hear in the streets and market squares”, says Pekka Vilkuna, 58, a Centre Party MP from Oulu Constituency.
      He does not see it as a cause for anyone to get upset and he does not understand that anyone would find it disturbing.
      Social Democrat MP Tero Rönni (53, Pirkanmaa Consituency) is astonished at the reputation he has picked up. “Complete nonsense!”
      Rönni says that the only place where he might let his grip on style lapse into the realm of smutty is in the sauna. In his view it is possible that women find the talk disturbing, and that the men just don’t understand they are causing offence.
      “The problem can be ironed out by talking about it. But nobody has ever said anything to me about my behaviour”, wonders Rönni, a member of Parliament’s internal Occupational Health and Safety Commission.
     
SDP member Esa Lahtela (58, Northern Karelia) says that he does not use crude or dirty language because of his personal religious convictions. And yet he, too, has been named as one of the men behaving badly.
      Lyly Rajala, 56, a National Coalition Party MP from Oulu, does not understand the charges that are being levelled.
      “I suppose I might say to someone that that is a nice outfit you are wearing. Someone might even take that as some kind of harassment”, says Rajala.
      Lauri Oinonen (60, Centre Party, from Keuruu in Central Finland) describes the claims as “utter gobbledy-gook” with not a shred of foundation.
      “I’m only too willing to hear it to my face if someone has something to complain about. It’s another form of workplace harassment of Members of Parliament, to have baseless claims like this being put around”, says the Centrist pastor.and former military chaplain.
     
Another Centre Party MP, 41-year-old Mika Lintilä from Vaasa Constituency, is surprised by the charges.
      “Maybe this [the claims] stems from the fact that I am an open and direct sort of individual. Perhaps I will have to be a bit more careful what I let slip from my mouth in future.”
      Tapani Mäkinen (42, National Coalition Party, from Vantaa in Uusimaa Constituency) also expresses his surprise at being numbered among the group.
      “But you have to take a message like this on board seriously. One has to take a long hard look in the mirror and try to improve one’s habits.”
      Mäkinen says he likes being good company and the life and soul of the party. “But apparently some of the things have gone a bit too far. People will have to learn to curb their tongue a bit, but that doesn’t mean you have to be dull.”
     
Pekka Vilkuna believes he knows why the women have been accusing the men of improper behaviour: “It’s because it is fashionable these days to say that.”
      He advises the women to laugh along at the jokes, and says that if they cannot take that sort of heat, then maybe they should reconsider their occupation.
      However, nowadays they do not need to heed such advice.
      According to the terms of the amended Gender Equality Act of 2005, sexual harassment in the workplace can extend to dirty talk or to intrusive observations about the body, about the way someone dresses, or their personal life.
     
Harassment based on gender does not have to be sexual in the literal sense of the term, but can be for instance talk that demeans or degrades the other sex.
      And then the employer is supposed to step in with possible sanctions.
      But Members of Parliament do not have an employer to whom someone could report inappropriate behaviour.
      They are not contractually employed in the manner that staff in the establishment are, but are elected officials holding a position of trust.
      They therefore do not have a “boss” as such - unless you count the public at the ballot-box every four years.
     
In fact if anything the opposite is true: MPs are employers. The highest administrative organ of the Finnish Eduskunta is the so-called Kansliatoimikunta, or Chancellery Commission, a body made up of the Speaker of Parliament, the two Deputy Speakers, and four MPs and their respective deputies chosen by their peers.
      They thus have the power, if they wish to wield it, to influence the career of civil servants and others working within the house.
      Parliament is also an extremely hierarchical place of employment, where young assistants are right down at the bottom of the pile. A parliamentary aide should carry out his or her work as far as possible quite unnoticed, and be a “church mouse” of sorts.
      In Parliament’s Newspaper Room, for instance, they are not allowed to speak.
     
An MP who chooses to do so can easily exploit this quasi-royal right of privilege afforded to the members.
      “How on earth is a young woman of 20, in her first place of employment, supposed to dare to tell some MP who is old enough to be her grandfather that he should stop talking in such a lewd fashion?” ponders one aide.
      “And in any case, why should a woman have to be able to say something witty and ‘defuse the situation’ when a man is making cheesy off-colour remarks?”
     
There is a reluctance to report bad behaviour, because it may end up coming out in public.
      And that could put one’s own career on hold or worse. Hence in this article, too, nobody wanted to be quoted under their own name talking about harassment in Parliament.
      The problem is not so much one of a core group of wrongdoers, as of a nodding culture of tacit approval - those others who snigger at the dirty jokes and ribald observations or hear them and remain silent.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 27.1.2008


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Study finds extensive sexual harassment in Parliament (25.1.2008)

See also:
  HS reprimanded by media ethics watchdog over sexual harassment story (20.3.2008)

TANJA AITAMURTO / Helsingin Sanomat