Electoral Reform Opens Roads to Presidency for Finnish Women

Abstract

This is how political scientist Aili Mari Tripp poignantly highlighted some of the differences between Finnish and U.S. presidential campaigns in an essay on the 2000 presidential elections in Finland. Eight years later, there would be plenty of additional oddities to report, for example, how President Tarja Halonen acquired and happily embraced a new image as a Conan O'Brien look-alike (surely every woman's dream!) and the subsequent meeting between both red-haired personae in her residence during her second-term presidential campaign. On a more serious note, however, the basics of the greater narrative of politics remain the same: That is, since 1994, all three presidential elections in Finland have culminated in a second round in a race between a female and a male candidate for popular support. As a result, Foreign Minister Tarja Halonen was elected as the first woman president of the country in 2000 and reelected in 2006.