Finland’s new PM has wowed the world. But what about Finland?

 Helsinki

Sanna Marin is the world’s new feminist political icon. At the age of 34, she’s just been appointed the prime minister of Finland after a power struggle in the five-party coalition government that forced Antti Rinne out of office only six months after he won the general election. Marin isn’t just young and a woman — she was brought up by two mothers in a small town south of Tampere, an industrial region that isn’t known for championing progressive values. That backstory has earned her the plaudits of feminists on both the left and the right. To the Daily Telegraph, she’s a ‘trailblazer’. For the Guardian, her coalition of women-led parties reminds us ‘that another politics is possible’.

The Finns, however, are far less excited. Women politicians are hardly a novelty in Helsinki: they have had two female prime ministers and one female president in the past 20 years. Three of the four last cabinets had female majorities, and there was already a strong group of young women in the cabinet before Marin moved into the Government Palace. They are still around. The education ministry is run by Li Andersson, 32, who has led the Finnish left since she was 29. Maria Ohisalo, Green party leader, is 34 years old and heads up the Home Office. And the centre of political attention in the past weeks has not been Sanna Marin but Katri Kulmani, the 32-year-old Centre party leader who led the campaign to depose the last PM. She is now the new finance minister.

Identity politics hasn’t really taken hold in Finland. In Helsinki this week, several commentators were alarmed at the ‘Behold! Women!’ tone of the global media coverage. One Finnish politician, a darling of the European left, even complained that ‘It’s unfair that she is praised only for the fact that she is young, a woman and has lesbian parents, which are all factors that Sanna couldn’t influence herself.