Finland National Report on Law and Policy Addressing Men's Practices

(i) National legal and governmental policy is framed and characterised by a complex formal mixture of statements favouring gender equality in principle and statements using gender-neutrality as the major form of governmental communication; statements typically promote and favour gender equality, and this is generally done through gender-neutral laws and policies. This means that there are relatively few explicit governmental statements on or about men. Most laws are constructed in a gender-neutral way.
(ii) The Finnish Act on Equality Between Men and Women came into force in 1987. As the Nordic predecessors of the Finnish Act, it is mostly a passive law to be used when it is alleged that someone is discriminated against.
(iii) Gendered exceptions to this generally gender-neutral pattern in which men are explicitly or implicitly named include: compulsory conscription into the army; a strongly pro-fatherhood policy and ideology; national programme against violence; and recent political debate on same-sex marriage.
(iv) In addition there has been a variety of extra-governmental political activity around men of varying gender political persuasions. Since 1986 there has been a ‘Men’s Section’, (the Subcommittee on Men’s Issues), a subcommittee of the Council for Equality between Women and Men. This has recently produced a publication which sets out ways in which gender equality can be developed to men’s advantage.
(v) There is a lack of consideration of how men might assist the promotion of gender equality in ways that assist women; there is also a lack of consideration of how different aspects of men’s practices might connect with each other, for example, fatherhood and violence