The President is the First Lady

Tarja Halonen will soon have been the President of Finland for 12 years

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By Hanna Kaarto
     
      On Tuesday Tarja Halonen hosts her last Independence Day reception at the Presidential Palace. There is nothing strange about that – not any more. Finland has had a woman as president for such a long time that one hardly notices it.
      Since Halonen was elected, more than 600,000 children have been born who have lived in a republic led by a woman.
      The institution has taken on a woman’s face – the face of a certain red-headed woman from Kallio.
     
When Tarja Halonen was campaigning for President 12 years ago, she attracted an enthusiastic popular movement: people interested in equality from the worlds of science, art, and politics across political boundaries. A woman as president! At the time the idea felt quite revolutionary.
      “I was walking on top of a small cloud for several days after the election. After all, there was a feel of the opening of a new day. A page of history had turned”, says Johanna Pakkanen, the acting secretary-general of NYTKIS – the Coalition of Finnish Women’s Associations.
      “I was a young working woman. It felt very encouraging. I got the feeling that a woman in Finland can achieve any position”, says Anne Moilanen, editor-in-chief of Tulva, the publication of the Feminist Association Unioni.
     
There were concrete changes at the Presidential Palace as well: nowadays the President is officially addressed in a gender-neutral manner.
      There was also more gender equality among the President’s staff. Women have been taken on both as advisors and as security personnel; security guards need to accompany the President into the sauna and to the toilet as well. On some official trips men have been in the minority among the President’s delegation.
      Only the aides-de-camp remained male. The sight of a masculine military officer carrying a woman’s handbag in connection with Halonen’s first official appearances as President raised some hilarity, but people have grown accustomed to that.
     
For feminists such as Pakkanen and Moilanen it has been important that Halonen was not just any woman who happened to be president – she is a feminist and an advocate of equality. In the 1970s she served as chair of the gay rights organisation SETA, defending the rights of homosexuals at a time when such issues were not discussed as much as they are now.
      For advocates of tolerance and equality, this was virtually a dream come true for some.
      Some thought that they could use this as a political weapon. One MP, the late Tony Halme (True Finns), said in a radio interview after the Parliamentary elections of 2003 that anything is possible in Finland, citing as examples his election to Parliament, and that “we have a lesbian as president”. Halme later apologised to Halonen for the remark.
     
It was not just her gender that set Halonen apart from other presidents.
      Before she was elected she lived in an unmarried relationship with Dr. Pentti Arajärvi - in separate apartments in fact. In addition she had been a single mother for a long time, and was not a member of the Lutheran Church.
      As a top-ranking politician, Halonen was also very down-to-earth. Her belly dancing and painting hobbies, her allotment garden, and her discount cards became familiar to the Finns. The ordinary citizen president would go swimming with other people. She was seen wearing a baseball cap, and she jammed on stage at the Pori Jazz Festival with James Brown. She has appeared to be her own self.
     
Her non-conformity inspired former MP Rosa Meriläinen, who still studied political science and promoted green politics in Tampere in 2000. In the second round of the elections, when the Green League candidate Heidi Hautala was no longer in the running, Rosa Meriläinen campaigned enthusiastically for Halonen, and kept repeating a slogan about sending “ovaries to [the President’s official residence] Mäntyniemi”.
      Meriläinen felt that it was important that an emancipated woman was running for president. After Halonen’s election a band was established among feminist circles at the University of Tampere called Pressan menkat: the name of the band, and the lyrics to one of its songs, centres around the idea that Finland has a president with a menstrual cycle.
     
One of President Halonen’s characteristics that Rosa Meriläinen has found appealing is that unlike many other successful female politicians, she has not started to “frizzle her hair” or to put on “war paint” or other “armour”.
      Halonen is quite different. When she appears on television, and in other public events, her enhancements are quite understated. She is often seen in public without makeup, or a hairdresser’s final touches. One television studio make-up expert said that Halonen will protest if too much makeup is applied.
     
Her gender helped Halonen win support across party lines. MP Paula Lehtomäki (Centre Party) campaigned on behalf of Centre Party candidate Esko Aho in the elections of 2000.
      Lehtomäki has seen what kind of a president Halonen is.
     
Just over three years after the election, Lehtomäki was named Minister of Foreign Trade and Development in the government of Anneli Jäätteenmäki (Centre Party). The term of the first woman Prime Minister was cut short, but Lehtomäki and Halonen got to know each other well. Lehtomäki says that Halonen’s attitude toward the new minister was “maternal”.
      “She has tried to give guidance and advice in an appropriate manner”, Lehtomäki says. On official foreign trips Halonen asked, like a mother might ask her daughter, for Lehtomäki to perform for the guests.
      “In Japan, at a final lunch of the export promotion tour there were geishas who performed in a nice little programme. The President asked me to sing. I sang Täällä Pohjantähden alla”, Lehtomäki recalls.
     
In the summer of 2003 the EU summit was held in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, and as is often the case, it occurred at Midsummer. On Midsummer Eve Halonen asked Lehtomäki at the end of the official summit dinner if a Midsummer party of the Finnish delegation might be taking place in the hotel next door.
      “I said ‘Madam President, it’s only half past ten. I’m quite sure that it’s still going on’.”
      And the minister and the President went there, and everyone sang.
     
Rosa Meriläinen also describes Halonen’s attitude as maternal – actually she calls it “grandmotherly”. That is, there is no trace of the lady who snaps at people who are close to her, as has been said in the media. “She is uncomplicated toward younger women. I have never seen the irritable side. I have felt that she has respected me”, Meriläinen says.
      Both Meriläinen and Lehtomäki were present at the President’s summer residence in June 2003 when one of the most dramatic twists of domestic politics of recent years took place. Anneli Jäätteenmäki came to submit a request for her government’s resignation. At the same time Halonen had as guests a group of young influential figures who were interested in globalisation. Dr. Arajärvi showed the guests to the tower of Kultaranta while the historic paper exchanged hands in the yard of the granite palace.
      When she returned to her guests, Halonen was visibly sad, Meriläinen says. “I think that gender also had something to do with it. She would have liked to see the first woman prime minister succeed.”
     
Gender equality is an issue that does not raise much attention in Finland, and it has long been the practice that governments in Finland have seen to it that a gender balance is kept among ministers.
      However, in foreign countries talk of equality and the actions behind it have resonance.
      “Halonen has kept the status of women at the front very actively and purposefully. There are no fora in which she would not have raised it”, Lehtomäki says.
     
Finland has paid for the participation of woman delegates from developing countries in international meetings, for which women from those countries have made a point of expressing gratitude. This is not to say that it would be exclusively the doing of President Halonen, but having a woman as President has been living proof that equality is possible.
      A woman president also gets extra attention in a sea of black and grey men’s suits. Thanks to official protocol, a woman from a small country can get a better spot among state leaders than a man from a small country. Halonen has also managed to grasp at opportunities. In 2004 in Istanbul she was featured in newspapers around the world in a picture in which she straightens the necktie of George W. Bush at the summit of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. It looked as if they had a close relationship.
      However, in bilateral foreign policy interaction there were no signs of any such thing.
     
Halonen is a lawyer by training, and this has been evident from the way that she uses power. She knows the legal paragraphs and does not interfere with matters that are outside of her jurisdiction. On the other hand, she has also made full use of the authority that she has.
      Her policy in making appointments will be remembered the best. In 2000 Halonen named Sinikka Salo to serve on the executive of the Bank of Finland. This was the stormiest of Halonen’s appointment decisions, because the Parliamentary Supervisory Council of the Bank of Finland had not recommended that Salo be appointed.
      Rosa Meriläinen did not feel that the appointment of Salo advanced gender equality. “Halonen pushed Salo into the Bank of Finland rather roughly. Openly favouring women over men is awkward. A symbolic act like that caused more harm to the cause of equality”, Meriläinen says.
     
Johanna Pakkanen disagrees with Meriläinen. She feels that the appointment of Salo was a brilliant move. It showed that it is not completely irrelevant if a man or a woman serves as president – and not just someone who is biologically female – she is also a woman who promotes the women’s cause.
      Anne Moilanen sees a certain kind of congealment taking place in Halonen’s second term. “Does power corrupt, or what’s it about? I just feel that she has a kind of cabin fever about Mäntyniemi”, Moilanen says.
     
Many feel that Halonen could have taken a tougher point of view on matters that have moved the nation, such as the school shootings. In Meriläinen’s view, Halonen has excessively latched on to her power and its symbols. For instance, Halonen did not want to let go of the custom according to which one of the ministers should shake the hand of the President whenever the President travels abroad.
      “One of the busy and highly-paid ministers has to drag his or her arse to Helsinki-Vantaa every time Halonen gets on a plane” Moilanen exclaims.
     
With increasing frequency, that minister is a woman. Even though the President no longer decides in Finland who is to be a minister, Halonen could have made it easier for many Finnish female politicians.
      Since Halonen was elected, Finland has had two women as prime ministers and now it has a woman as minister of finance for the first time ever.
     
And by the way, Minister of Finance Jutta Urpilainen is also the first woman to be the chair of the Social Democratic Party.
      “The value of a forerunner is important. There are teenagers here who do not remember a time when the president would not be a woman”, Rosa Meriläinen points out.
      “It is hard to change a culture through politics, because the law and money do not have minds to change. But a woman as president for twelve years – that has had an impact on the Finnish psychological landscape.”
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.12.2011


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Halonen praises Finnish peacekeeping efforts in last UN General Assembly address (22.9.2011)

See also:
  Tarja Halonen´s UN legacy (Finland and the Security Council) (22.12.2009)

HANNA KAARTO / Helsingin Sanomat
hanna.kaarto@hs.fi