Sukupuolittunut poliittinen edustus Suomessa

Abstract

Väitöskirjassa tutkitaan poliittisen edustuksen sukupuolittumista Suomessa 1900-luvun alun äänioikeustaistelusta vuoden 2006 presidentinvaaleihin. Poliittinen edustus on sukupuolittunut, jos kansanedustajiksi ja ministereiksi valikoituu enimmäkseen toisen sukupuolen edustajia ja/tai jos naisten ja miesten ajatellaan politiikassa edustavan eri asioita. Demokratian kannalta tämä on ongelmallista, jos se johtaa sellaiseen sukupuolen mukaiseen vallanjakoon, jossa toinen sukupuoli on jatkuvasti enemmistönä poliittisissa elimissä ja pitää hallussaan politiikan johtotehtäviä. Juuri näin poliittinen edustus sukupuolittui 1900-luvun Suomessa: naisten keskittyessä hyvinvointipolitiikkaan, miehille jäivät muut poliittiset tehtävät mukaan lukien poliittisen järjestelmän ylimmät, kuten presidentin ja pääministerin, asemat.

Kansanedustuksen subjektista käytyyn määrittelykamppailuun osallistui myös ensimmäisen aallon feminismi (porvarillinen naisasialiike ja sosialidemokraattinen työläisnaisliike). Se riitautti kansanedustuksen subjektin, kansan tahdon, rakentamalla naisten poliittisen edustuksen subjektin, naiskansan tahdon, jota vain naiset voivat edustaa. Koko kansan tahtoa eivät voi edustaa vain miehet, kuten naisasianaiset totesivat. Tässä on yhtymäkohta Ranskan 1990-luvun parité -liikkeeseen, jossa naisille pyrittiin luomaan oikeus edustaa yleistahtoa. Tätä oikeutta eivät suomalaiset naiset saaneet, sillä kansan tahdon sukupuolittuminen johti käytännössä siihen, että naisten oli vaikea päästä poliittisiin asemiin, joissa edellytettiin yleistahdon tulkintaa. Tämä selittyy sillä, että feminismin subjekti ( naiset ) rakentui sen saman poliittisen diskurssin puitteissa, joka sulki naisen pois politiikasta (yleistahdon tulkitsijoina) niin hegeliläis-snellmanilaisessa kuin liberaalissakin poliittisessa ajattelussa.

Nationalistisen(kin) diskurssin sukupuolittama kansalaisuus sekä henkinen äitiys naiskansalaisten eettisenä toimintaorientaationa sukupuolitti poliittista toimintaa, agendaa ja edustusta ja muodosti äidillis-sosiaalisen toimintapiirin parlamentaarisen politiikan sisään. Tätä sukupuolen mukaista työn- ja vallanjako vahvisti naisliikkeiden ja -järjestöjen maternalistinen agenda. Äidillis-sosiaalinen toimintakenttä, jonka sisällä myös 1900-luvun jälkipuoliskon naisystävällistä hyvinvointipolitiikka (esim. lasten päivähoitokysymys) ajettiin, rajasi naisten toimintaa politiikassa lähes koko vuosisadan. Kiista siitä, voiko nainen olla valtiomies ja edustaa yleistahtoa ( puhua kansakunnan nimissä ) alkoi vasta 1990-luvun presidentinvaalikeskusteluissa, mutta jatkui vielä vuoden 2006 presidentinvaaleissa eli senkin jälkeen kun ensimmäinen nainen oli valittu tasavallan presidentiksi (2000) ja pääministeriksi (2003).

Gendered Political Representation in Finland

Finland is known as the model country for gender equality. In addition to women's early suffrage in 1906, the high representation of women in politics is a part of this country brand. Equal political representation regardless of gender has nearly come true in Finland in the 21st century. However, as far as this political equality is thought to be the result of the liberal ideas of the equality (and similarity) of citizens, this idea could not be more wrong. This research*, where I analyse the political representation of 'women' in the past one hundred years, puts in question such gender neutral notions of political equality. According to my definition, political representation in parliamentary politics is gendered if the representatives of one gender (usually men) continuously hold the majority of the seats in the parliament and government as well as the highest political offices of a given political system, and/or if the men and women are assumed to represent different issues (interests, ideas or identities) in politics. This, indeed, was the way political representation was gendered in Finland throughout the twentieth century. The research also shows that gendered political representation in Finland became possible by gendering the subject of democratic representation as a result of the struggle for universal suffrage. The poststructuralist critique argues that in order to analyse 'political representation' one should deconstruct the political subject (what is represented) as well as its representatives (who represents) both of which are produced by the discourses and practices of political representation. The aim of my research was to explain how the subject of political representation was gendered in Finland which would also explain how the 'representatives' of this gendered subject were produced. In order to do this I had to analyse how 'women' as a separate category and a political agent was constructed in Finland. As Joan Scott argues, feminism emerged as a protest against women's political exclusion. This was the case also in Finland whose first-wave feminism contested the masculine political subjects of the contemporary political discourses: the 'general will' produced by the Hegelian-Snellmanian discourse and the 'individual-citizen', the subject of the liberal political theory, which both excluded 'women' from political agency although in different ways. Still, at the same time, the subject of feminism in whose name feminists demanded equal political rights, was constructed within the limits of those same discourses that it challenged. Because feminists had to act on behalf of 'women' they had to invoke the very category that was excluded from politics. In this way, the subject of Finnish feminism was drawn from the gender difference constructed by the dominant discourses and, most importantly, by the (Hegelian-Snellmanian) nationalistic discourse. The concept of gendered citizenship refers to the republican notion of citizenship emphasising the citizens' obligations, agency and contribution to the common good of a political community which in the communitarian thinking is understood as a cultural community. This definition resembles the notion of gendered citizenship constructed by the Finnish nationalistic discourse. The gendering of the (social and political) citizenship in Finland in the 19th century made use of the universal category of 'women' (crossing the class lines) excluded from political agency and resulting in the notion of female citizenship based on 'social motherhood'. It was in the name of this 'maternal citizenship' that Finnish feminists claimed the political representation of 'women' during the struggle for suffrage. As my analysis shows, this subject of political representation, which I named "the will of the female People", was produced by the bourgeois and socialist feminist discourses and it contested the subject of democratic political representation - the will of the People. Most importantly, 'the will of the female People', as feminists argued, could only be represented by women. There were some similarities between the feminist struggle for the political representation of women in Finland and the French dispute of parité democracy in the 1990s. The arguments of the French feminists include that the concept of 'the will of the nation' should be renegotiated so that women, too, would be entitled to represent the general will. However, in Finland, as my research shows, women did not receive the 'right' to represent the general will. On the contrary, the system of gendered political representation established in the twentieth century led to women's marginalisation in politics and in such a way that the women were, in fact, denied access to the highest political positions where one was expected to interpret the general will (as statesmen do).

This is due to the fact that in regard to its political ontology, the 'will of the female People' was based on the same category of 'woman' that was excluded from the subject of modern political representation (the general will, which, therefore, could only be represented by men). Instead, women's civic and public agency, which I called the maternal-social agency, differed from the men's political agency and in such a way even that these two were mutually exclusive. Women's social agency refers to maternalist politics which by focusing on the welfare of mothers, children and the disadvantaged was in Finland, as elsewhere, the women's major avenue to politics. As a result, women built their own maternal-social agenda and arena within the parliamentary politics. In addition to the gendered agenda, even political recruitment was gendered. Most of the women politicians in Finland in the first half of the 20thcentury were recruited in politics through their own women-only associations, such as the women's sections within political parties. This was also the case in top-level politics where the majority of the women cabinet ministers were ministers of social affairs (and health) or ministers of education (or culture). This gender segregation in politics was combined with a gender hierarchy as the highest political positions were held by men. One of the consequences of this system of gendered political representation was the women's 'permanent' under-representation in the political bodies. Although the proportion of women in the Parliament of Finland began to grow from the 1970s onwards, the gendered model of political representation did not change much before the 1990s. Also the contemporary Finnish feminism, which in the 1980s was influenced by the woman-centred feminist theory, maintained the gendered political representation by its aim to re-value "women's agency". Since the objective of the woman-centred state feminism in Finland was to build a womanfriendly welfare state, even this feminist project pushed women to the maternal-social sphere. On the other hand, the woman-centred feminism also had the objective to break the gender hierarchy in politics which culminated in three presidential elections, in all of which the female candidates stole the show. My analysis of the media campaigns related to these presidential elections (1994, 2000 and 2006) indicates that gendered political representation was also maintained by the cultural representations of gender highlighting the double meaning of 'representation'.

Therefore the main conclusion of this research is that instead of being regarded as similar/equal citizens with men, women got access to politics as mother-citizens who were expected to restrict their activity within the maternal-social sphere. What is more, this feminine agency was separated from the masculine political agency which entitled the male citizens to interpret and, hence, represent the general will. This system of gendered political representation was constructed and maintained by feminist agency, too, which however was also behind the dismantling of the system from the 1990s onwards.