I would like to present you an "equality report" from my home country, which is Finland. First, I will give you a list of statistics and facts - and then tell what kind of problems we have here.

1. We have a female president (Tarja Halonen).

2. The state and municipalities offer public daycare for all kids in order to help women to match their career with their family.

3. We have a very long maternity/paternity leave from work (with reduced salary paid while one is on the maternity/paternity leave).

4. About 40-45% of the members of the parliament are women.

5. In public organizations 60% of managers are male. However, when focusing on managers younger than 45 years, the majority of managers are female.

6. We have an "equality law" and the "governmental equality office".

7. The Finnish women received their right to vote year 1906 as the second nation in the world.

8. The Finnish women have used their own last name after marriage for "a thousand years" (years 800-1800, especially in eastern Finland).

9. According to police statistics, 2000 women and 200 men are each year victims of severe interspousal violence (population size 5 million).

10. According to the Helsinki area county officials, 3% of men and 6% of women are each year victims of interspousal violence (if using a wider definition of violence to include pushing, slapping etc.)

11. According to Eurostat and the www.stat.fi the Finnish fathers (whose youngest child is less than 7 years old) have 1 minute per day more free time than their female partners.

12. According to several studies the wage discrimination against women is on the level of 2-5% of the wages.

Well, that was some good news and some bad news. There is still unequal treatment of women, but compared to some other states, the situation is not bad at all.

From a male point of view, there is only one area in life, where there is evidence about "oppression of men". That is the custody trials. According to Mari Antikainen, the Finnish social workers usually tend to advise giving the custody to the mother even if all objective factors in the situation are equal. (Mari Antikainen is a female researcher and simultaneously a high official in the social sector).

Please, give comments on this report. What statistics do you find curious or very different than the ones of USA and Canada?

Yours,

SosiologiR