She believes she will continue writing, but in other ways her future is still open. In the winters she goes in for the increasingly popular hobby of outdoor winter swimming, dipping in for a swim in a hole in the ice, and in the summers she canoes off the coast of Helsinki. A new milestone in Finnish politics was reached in March, when Finland s first woman president Tarja Halonen assumed office. Halonen, a social democrat, received votes across party lines. Young women in particular wanted to have a woman as president of the republic.
Women figure prominently in Finnish politics in other ways too, as MPs and ministers.
Halonen was elected president when she was foreign minister. When measured by formal indicators, Finland is a very egalitarian country for men and women, but when important decisions are taken in, for instance, economy, women fall behind. Real power still escapes women, Anu Kantola says. Kantola, however, emphasises that electing a woman president was a great symbolic victory for many women. Halonen, as it were, normalises the significance of the candidate s gender in politics.