TOKYO - Women leaders are held to much stricter moral standards by society than men, with little room to be seen as mothers, daughters and friends as well as politicians, former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said.
In an online interview with Kyodo News ahead of a visit to Japan to mark the publication of the Japanese edition of her memoir, Marin, 40, said she believes she "would have been treated differently" had she been a man.
She became the world's youngest serving prime minister at 34 in December 2019, leading a cabinet in which women held a majority of posts and steering Finland through the coronavirus pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
But her fashion sense and private life also attracted intense attention and her conduct in office was constantly scrutinized, raising questions about the different standards applied to male and female leaders.
A video of her singing and dancing with friends became public in 2022, prompting speculation about drug use, which she denied, and a drug test that came back negative.
Marin said a night out with friends during her summer holiday would also have made the news if she had been a man, but would not have drawn weeks of coverage.
"I felt it was out of proportion," she said. "I felt there were also double standards for me, because I was viewed from a different moral lens than a man would have been viewed."
Marin said men are more readily accepted as people who have both a professional and a private life, while women are expected to conform to narrow ideas of how they should behave and look.
Women are held to moral standards that nobody can meet. "It's a trap for women to be viewed like this," she said.
Despite the personal toll, Marin said, she remained proud of having had the authority to make difficult decisions for her country.
"I wanted power. I wanted to change things," she said.
Her goals included improving the rights of women and minorities, strengthening climate and environmental legislation, and protecting the Nordic welfare system, which had helped her family through services such as subsidized childcare and tuition-free education.
During her premiership, Finland joined NATO in April 2023, ending its longstanding policy of military nonalignment, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine a year earlier.
"I'm extremely grateful that I was able to have that power and make those decisions and leave a mark within our society," she said of her time in office. "I wouldn't change that for the world."
Her commitment to the welfare system was rooted in her own upbringing. Her mother grew up in an orphanage, began working at 15 and raised her with little money, yet is one of the most positive people Marin knows.
"She views the world in a way that every day is a gift," Marin said.
Quality childcare and education, including university without tuition fees, had opened a path to politics that would otherwise have been out of reach, she said.
Marin believes her personal story "is actually a success story for the Nordic welfare model because I come from such a humble background," she said.
Becoming a mother herself made political decisions more personal, as she began to consider how they would affect her daughter's future.
For all the decisions she made as a politician, the choice to start a family while serving as a member of parliament remains especially important to her.
"I think that was the best decision of my life," she said.
Her premiership ended following the 2023 general election, and she later stepped back from domestic politics. She now works as a strategic counsellor at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, advising political leaders on policy reforms.
Marin said she wanted distance from the intense media attention and more time with her daughter, whose early childhood she felt she had largely missed during her premiership.
Through her memoir, Marin hopes to encourage readers to see political participation as both a right and a responsibility, rather than leaving the task of building a better future to others.
Even small actions, such as helping a neighbor, joining a demonstration or writing, can create hope, she said.
"I think hope is something that we create ourselves," she said.
