The aim of this chapter is to focus on gender and austerity politics in Finland. Finland represents a latecomer to the economic crisis in Europe maintaining its highest credit rating status until 2014. The conservative-right government in Finland significantly intensified economic austerity politics with its government program and measures to implement it in May 2015. The government maintains that Finland is the only country in Europe – in addition to Greece – that suffers from zero or negative growth rates and it aims to implement massive cuts to the public sector combined with a general weakening of working life conditions and welfare benefits. With the populist right party The Finns in the government and the refuge crisis in Europe, the austerity politics is combined with a harsh anti-immigration policy. Our aim is to, first, evaluate the ways in which the austerity politics in Finland are gendered and racialized. We argue that the three governing parties represent – in often competing and contradictory ways – neoliberalism, conservatism and anti-immigration with detrimental consequences to gender equality and gender equality policies. Second, we study the reactions to these gendered and racialized policies by focusing on anti-austerity activism in Finland. We study the old alliances and new formations to explore the kinds of political activism that become possible in times of crisis.
