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http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/wom1693.doc.htm

 

General Assembly

WOM/1693

Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York

Committee on Elimination of

Discrimination against Women

841st & 842nd Meetings* (AM & PM)

FINLAND’S NEW GENDER EQUALITY PLAN WILL ADVANCE WOMEN’S RIGHTS, PREVENT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, REDUCE GENDER PAY GAP, CEDAW COMMITTEE TOLD

Experts Commend Progress, But Lament Prevalence of Gender-Based Violence, Weak

Penalties for Sexual Harassment in Workplace, High Suicide Rate among Young Girls

 

The Finnish Government would adopt a four-year gender equality action plan next week that aimed to advance women’s rights and empowerment by preventing violence against them, reducing the gender pay gap, promoting female entrepreneurship, raising gender equality awareness in schools and reducing gender segregation in education and the labour market, the Director of that country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry told the Women’s Anti-Discrimination Committee today.

 

Presenting Finland’s fifth and sixth periodic reports to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Arto Kosonen said that the 2007-2011 Government plan called for more financing of Government agencies and women’s organizations engaged in gender promotion and that last year Finland’s Parliament had approved an act that granted the country’s largest women’s organization an annual State subsidy.  Next year, officials would report to Parliament on implementation of the Act on Equality between Women and Men and would submit by early 2010 their first ever report on the subject. 

 

Those moves were part of a series of efforts to improve the lot of Finnish women, whom on average earned 20 per cent less than their male counterparts and carried less weight in the political arena and corporate boardrooms, Mr. Kosonen said.  The Government had already reached its goal of filling 40 per cent of all seats of administrative boards of fully and partly State-owned businesses with women, and was urging the private sector to put more women in top management posts.  The pay-off would be worthwhile, he said, pointing to a 2007 study of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum that showed that Finnish businesses with female managing directors were financially more successful than those managed by men. 

 

While lauding Finland’s progress in implementing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Committee experts expressed concern over the continued prevalence of violence against women, particularly domestic violence, discrimination against migrant women, the marginalization of Roma and Sami women, and female genital mutilation.  One expert lamented that the budget for gender equality had been reduced by one third over the past three years and wondered if Finland’s gender mainstreaming strategy was sufficiently focused on women’s specific needs and if its implementation was being monitored and analyzed.  Another expert was dismayed over weak penalties for perpetrators of sexual harassment in the workplace, while another was alarmed by the high suicide rate among young girls -- the second highest in the world. 

 

In response, the Finnish delegation pointed to a variety of Government-run and Government-funded programmes, such as a national action plan to implement the Council of Europe’s recommendations to end domestic violence against women; funding of $400,000 in 2008 for gender equality agencies; health, education and employment services for Roma women; a new Child Protection Act mandating the hiring of psychologists and counsellors in schools to address mental health concerns; and proposals by the Ministry of Justice for stricter sentencing of perpetrators of domestic violence, among other programmes.

 

The Committee will take up the United Kingdom’s fifth and sixth periodic reports at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 10 July.

 

Background

 

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women met this morning to consider Finland’s fifth and sixth periodic reports (documents CEDAW/C/FIN/5 and CEDAW/C/FIN/6).

 

Led by Arto Kosonen, Director of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, the Finnish delegation also included Elisabeth Nauclér, Member of Parliament; Kirsi Pulkkinen, Counsellor of Legislation of the Ministry of Justice; Maija Ahokas, Senior Adviser of the Ministry of the Interior; Riitta Martikainen, Ministerial Adviser of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health; Viveca Arrhenius, Ministerial Adviser of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health; Marjaana Pelkonen, Senior Adviser of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health; Hillevi Lönn, Ministerial Adviser of the Ministry of Employment and the Economy; and Anja Nummijärvi, Deputy Director of the Office of the Equality Ombudsman.

 

Introduction of Reports

 

Presenting the reports, Mr. KOSONEN said they covered a period of eight and one-half years and were the outcome of effective cooperation with relevant ministries and other authorities, as well as civil society’s participation.  Despite public condemnation of violence against women, and national legislation, policies and programmes to end it, the prevalence of such violence had remained unchanged between 1997 and 2005.  Finland’s non-governmental organizations would launch a Government-funded anti-violence media campaign, as part of the Council of Europe’s “Stop domestic violence against women” campaign. 

 

He said that the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health had recently set up an inter-ministerial working group with a mandate to coordinate, develop and internally monitor and evaluate policies on domestic violence and violence against women.  The Government’s 2008-2011 Internal Security Programme sought to reduce violence in intimate partner relationships, especially violence against women, and to strengthen shelters, safe houses and other support services for victims.  The Programme also aimed to increase awareness of so-called “honour crimes” and female genital mutilation by training professionals who dealt with such concerns. 

 

A national research and development unit in the research institution of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health would be created in 2009 to support local and regional efforts to combat and prevent violence, he said.  In May, the Ministry and the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities had recommended that municipalities adopt strategic planning and a comprehensive approach to the problem.  Their implementation of such suggestions would be assessed in 2011.  Further, the Ministry of Justice was examining how to take into account an offender’s previous history of violence against an intimate partner or relation when making decisions in subsequent trials involving the same offender.  The Ministry of Justice was also examining the possibility of revising criminal proceedings for assault so that petty assaults committed in a close relationship would be considered offences subjected to public prosecution.

 

He noted that Finland now had a special prosecutor system -– including five key prosecutors specializing in offences against women and children -- to promote effective and fair enforcement of criminal liability.  The Internal Security Programme contained measures to prevent human trafficking, including awareness-raising, information dissemination and training.  On 25 June, the Government had adopted a revised National Plan of Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which aimed to lower the threshold of victim identification, for which the Ombudsman for Minorities would appoint a national rapporteur.  The Ministry of the Interior had also established an action plan against trafficking.  The Joutseno and Oulu reception centres set up in 2006 gave refuge to asylum seekers and provided them with legal advice, interpretation services, crisis counselling, social and health-care services, housing and other necessary care. 

 

Turning to legislation to end discrimination, he said that the Equality Committee set up by the Ministry of Justice was preparing a proposal for new anti-discrimination legislation.  It had issued an interim report in February.  Based on feedback on that report, the Equality Committee had decided to focus its reform efforts on the Anti-Discrimination Act and other relevant laws, with the main focus on discrimination on non-gender grounds.  Under those circumstances, it seemed unlikely that the Equality Committee would continue a detailed examination aimed at consolidating existing legislation.  The reform process would examine how to improve cooperation among the various bodies addressing equality, such as the Gender Equality Ombudsman and the Ombudsman for Minorities.  The Equality Committee was to issue its final report by the end of October 2009.  The 2006 Aland Islands Government Programme had a special chapter on gender equality, and the Aland Islands authorities had taken action to combat violence against women. 

 

He stressed that women with disabilities needed solid counselling on sexual and reproductive health, as well as sufficient professional day-to-day and child care assistance.  Finland’s social welfare and health-care system had tried to provide that.  In March 2007, Finland signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol, and it would ratify the treaty after the necessary legislative amendments had been made. 

 

The Committee, during its 2001 examination of his Government’s previous two reports, had expressed concern over continued discrimination against immigrant and minority women living in Finland, particularly Roma and Sami women, who suffered from gender and ethnic discrimination, he noted.  In recent years, the Government had focused on developing social and health services in the Sami language, leading to the creation of day care for Sami-speaking children and older persons.  The Government had earmarked financial support for social and health programmes in Sami municipalities, which had been designed in collaboration with the Sami Council.  In 2008, the Ombudsman for Children, in conjunction with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, had published a study on the experiences of Sami children and young people, which had showed that they had the same concerns as other children.  Most Sami children strongly identified with their Sami ethnicity. 

 

According to an unpublished 2008 study on the Roma people in the labour market, conducted by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy, Roma women were becoming flexible about the use of traditional clothing in the workplace, and suitable models had been created to address culturally challenging situations, he said.  In 2006, Finland’s first Roma Women’s Association, KROMANA, had been set up to improve the health, education and employment of Roma women and their families.  KROMANA had received public funding.  Municipalities had organized language courses and integration courses for immigrant women.  While immigrants accounted for 8 per cent of the population in the greater Helsinki area, they comprised up to 30 per cent of people in shelters, due largely to their lack of social safety networks. 

 

Turning to women’s participation in political decision-making, he said that the percentage of female politicians and other social decision makers had grown in recent years.  Women accounted for 42 per cent of Members of Parliament and 60 per cent of ministers.  Finland’s President was a woman.  The percentage of women in local councils had risen to 36 per cent.  The Government aimed to increase the number of women in economic decision-making and the number of women with gender expertise, and to mainstream a gender perspective into all levels of decision-making.  The goal of having women fill 40 per cent of all seats of administrative boards of fully and partly State-owned businesses had already been achieved.  Further, the Government had been encouraging the private sector to place more women in top management.  A fall 2007 study conducted by the Finnish Business and Policy Forum showed that Finnish businesses with female managing directors were financially more successful than those managed by men. 

 

Pay gaps between men and women persisted, however, he said.  In 2006, the Government and labour market organizations had launched an equal pay programme aimed at lowering the current 20 per cent gender pay gap by at least 5 per cent by 2015.  A collective agreement policy aimed to give higher average pay increases to women than men.  During the 2007-2008 collective agreement round, women, particularly in female-dominated sectors, had received slightly higher average nominal increases than men.  In addition, pay gaps were being decreased through pay system reform, reduced segregation, greater family leave for fathers and the promotion of women’s career development. 

 

This year, the Government began a two-year project to promote gender-sensitivity training among teachers, in order to erase gender stereotypes in schools, increase gender-sensitive teaching and create new methods to end gender segregation, he said.  The 2007-2013 Programme for Furthering and Mainstreaming of Gender Equality, funded in part by the European Social Fund, supported strategies for gender equality in employment and the economy.  One third of Finnish entrepreneurs were women.  The Government aimed to raise that share to 40 per cent.  In May, the Ministry of Labour had appointed a working group to identify obstacles to and incentives for women’s entrepreneurship.  The cost of parental leave had been identified as one obstacle.  More than 60 per cent of women-owned and operated enterprises were in the service sector.  The challenge ahead was to expand women’s entrepreneurship to sectors where they were underrepresented. 

 

He said that, on 17 July, the Government would adopt the 2008-2011 Government Action Plan for Gender Equality.  That Plan had seven priorities, among them, reducing pay differentials, promoting women’s careers, raising gender equality awareness in schools and reducing gender segregation in education and the labour market.  The Plan sought to prevent violence against women.  The Government would prepare its first ever report on equality between women and men, and submit it to Parliament in early 2010.  In 2009, the Government would give Parliament a report on implementation of the Act on Equality between Women and Men.  The 2007-2011 Government Programme stated that more resources would be allocated to Government agencies and women’s organizations engaged in gender promotion.  In 2007, the Parliament had approved an act that granted the country’s largest women’s organization an annual State subsidy.

 

Finland was committed to the goals of Security Council resolution 1325 (2000) and had integrated them into relevant external policies and development assistance, he said.  The Government was in the process of finalizing a national action plan to implement 1325, which covered women’s role and participation in conflict prevention, peace consolidation and peacebuilding; gender issues in crisis management and peacekeeping, including recruitment and training; and the protection of women.  The national action plan would be launched in September.





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