Today, the world is paying attention to women's rights. And Finland is doing lots of things to improve women's position and opportunity to play in the world. But also it has problems. Let's talk about efforts at Finland and problems of Finland.

 Finland is working hard to decrease gender discrimination. Finland is now considered a rich country, but a hundred years ago, it was a typical poor country in Europe. At that time, the Finnish government believed that to make the country rich, women should be educated properly to make full use of women's labor. As a result, women have the same ability as men by receiving higher education. In 1906, it granted women the right to vote for the first time in the world, and since then, women's participation has been prominent in various sectors of society including the political circles. So Finnish women could be educated fairly with men and participate in national positions.

 Finland's first female president, Tarja Halonen has created the Gender Equality law, which promotes gender equality and especially increases women's rights at work. It says that all employers should work hard for gender equality. In addition, gender equality quota was created to ensure that a small number of members of the local council were 40 percent. Also, they are working hard to do some campaigns for gender equality. However, Finland has a big problem, the gender pay gap. There are saying in Finland, "One euro for a Finnish woman is 80 cents. This is because women still receive 80 percent of men's wage." Finland women should work harder than men to get a high position as a job. Like this saying, it's a serious problem. Finland is going to make a regime to resolve the gender pay gap. Finland is going to pay equal money fairly. And Finland is going to accept French law, which makes to pay a fine to the company which does gender discrimination. Or the Finnish government will send watchers to watch whether companies do discrimination of gender pay gap.

 Finally, Finland is working hard for gender equality and trying to resolve the problem of the gender pay gap. I think Finland's problem will be resolved if they work hard like today and pay attention to women's thought. Finland will effort to make a country which is equal through gender and women can be respected as well as men. They will be able to achieve gender equality someday!

by Seo Hyeon An