I recently had the honour of representing Finland in the United Nations, at the Conference on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York.

Among other things, the conference focused on how to prevent violence in relationships, and violence against women. A large interview-survey with 53.000 participants shows that these phenomena are common, and also global. One-fourth of the interviewed women who had experienced violence had never spoken to anyone about what they had been through, before the conversation with the interviewer.

In many cultures they deal with the violence internally in the family. In many cases nothing is done at all, were the woman - the victim - fear the shame if anyone should know. As an important tool against violence, I have focused on the importance of an open debate, where cases should be called by their real names. There are no excuses for whispering, avoiding reality or hushing it down.

At the same time, it is also evident that men’s, the fathers, participation in household work and child care influences the dynamics and dialogue within the family in a positive direction. There are several empirical proofs for this, among others in our national family- and equality-barometers. Hand-on-heart, you hardly need any statistics to realize this. A more equal distribution of work at home does not only ease the family life, but even the efforts outside the home at work as well.

Interestingly enough, it was the questions about shared work in the homes that woke up the Finnish media, and we have recently gotten to read a lot about how the Equality minister encourages men to grab the vacuum cleaner to save their marriages! Even though it may sound like an easy and a bit far-out solution, I am - by own experience - convinced that men’s knowledge about women’s lives and everyday actually increases the understanding, and hence the stability, within the families. The saying about walking in someone else’s shoes is also valid in the home sphere.

As a step in strenghtening the families, I have put focus on the need for a total reform of the parental leave system in Finland. I believe we should study the Icelandic system, and be a pinch more radical, and introduce a model we call 6+6+6. In that model, both parents are given the possibility to stay home six months each, and the last six months can be taken by one of the parents, provided that they have already had six months parental leave.
At first there was of course some whining within the employers - but I believe that is merely a bone marrow-reaction. Employers are much wiser than that, and with time they will realize what we have already understood - a happy and stabile family means more money, even for the employers.