The prime minister says the young women’s government has been the target of hate speech
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HELSINKI, 20.1. (Reuters) – Prime Minister Sanna Marin says she and her young fellow women ministers have been the subject of widespread hate speech over their gender and appearance while in office.
“We see that when you are young and a woman, the hate speech we face is often sexualized,” Marin told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday, just over two years during his tenure as head of state in Finland.
Marin, 36, became the world’s youngest government leader in December 2019 when hetook the oath of office as prime minister, and originally all five party leaders of her center-left coalition government were women.
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Marin, who has more than 540,000 followers on Instagram around the world, said he won’t let hate speech influence his decisions, but he’s worried about offending social media.
“I’m worried about so many others, and that’s why we want to make sure we don’t tolerate that kind of behavior.”
Marin made it to national and international titles in December when he decided not to cut his evening shortly after he learned he had been exposed to COVID-19 the day before. Four days later, Marin apologized, saying she should have acted differently.
The clubbing of the young Prime Minister of Finland during the pandemic became the subject of memes around the world, some of which were humorous and some of which were offensive.
Some opponents have attacked her for appearing on the covers of some of the world’s biggest fashion magazines and for being often spotted with pop singers and social media influencers in Helsinki.
“I’m who I am, a 36-year-old mom and a young man with friends and a social life,” she said.
Marin, who enjoys cleaning his own facilities and running 20 miles outside, said he wants to bring the human side to a high level of political leadership and show other young adults that young people can lead too.
In December, Krista Kiuru, the Finnish minister responsible for the COVID response, announced that she was expecting a baby in March, so she became the Fifth Minister of the Marin government to have a child and to take parental leave while in office.
“Globally, the image of a leader is still very masculine … and there are few decision makers in the younger generation,” Marin said, stressing a desire to change that.
A report Last February, the NATO Strategic Communications Center found that Finnish women politicians were subjected to sexual violence on Twitter. Most of it came from right-wing groups and did not appear to be very coordinated.
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Reported by Essi Lehto and Anne Kauranen, edited by Mark Heinrich
Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.