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.