The youngest world leader

Brut America

"We don't meet in a female locker room and have locker room talk." Here's how Finland's new leader Sanna Marin describes what it's like to have an all-female cabinet.

Transcript

00:00It should be also seen as normal, that we have different generations,

00:05different genders in power to making decisions,

00:09because if we look at the population, there are different genders,

00:13there are different generations.

00:15We have the five leaders of the coalition, all women.

00:20How do you meet, where do you meet, when, how does it work?

00:26Well, it works like in every government.

00:28We have meetings and we make decisions and we don't, yeah.

00:35We don't meet in a female locker room and have a locker room talk.

00:40Well, it's funny you say that, because I saw in another interview you gave,

00:44you said you sometimes meet in the sauna.

00:47So, but of course I suppose that's not so different in Finland.

00:51Yeah.

00:52Everyone's meeting in saunas all the time.

00:54That's true, yeah.

00:56We don't have meetings in sauna.

00:58That was a joke that I made in Time magazine,

01:01but actually we've been to the sauna together with the five female leaders

01:07and talked about everything else, our family life and get to know better each other,

01:13because I think when you know people you're working with,

01:16you also can cooperate with them better.

01:19So, I think it's very important that we also have a social life

01:23and we also communicate in a not that formal way.

01:27It helps also in the formal meetings to get things done.

01:31What was more important, that you were the youngest head of government in the world

01:36or that you were female and that you had such a young cabinet which was dominated by women?

01:44Actually, I didn't focus on the media attention so much.

01:48You know, it's something else for many countries in the world

01:53that we have so many young women in power.

01:56We have actually a five-party coalition government

02:00and each party have a women leader in charge

02:04and four of us are under 35 years old and one of us is over 50 years old.

02:11So, we do have different generations in the government

02:15and of course it looks different than we are used to,

02:19but I hope that in the future it doesn't get as much attention

02:24because it should be also seen as normal,

02:27that we have different generations, different genders in power to make decisions

02:33because if we look at the population, there are different genders,

02:37there are different generations, so we need people from all backgrounds.

02:42But is it different to have, you know, a majority of your cabinet is women, so many young,

02:48is it in fact, do you think there's something different about the nature of the conversations?

02:53You've probably been in rooms and committees which were dominated by men.

02:58Do you think there's a different quality to the kind of conversation you have now in your cabinet?

03:04And we are very committed to build the society of the future in a way that is socially,

03:09economically, but also environmentally sustainable.

03:12So, actually the agenda hasn't changed.

03:15Of course, it's a different environment than we are used to,

03:20but I'm not the first female prime minister in Finland, I'm the third.

03:25And we also had a female president when I was a young girl and growing up,

03:31so maybe it's not that big a deal in Finland that we have five women in power

03:36and that we have a female prime minister, but of course it shows and means something

03:42that the media and the global community is talking about it.

03:48So, maybe today it's something else, but hopefully in the future it's the new normal

03:55that we have people from all kinds of backgrounds making the decisions in power places.

04:06For more UN videos visit www.un.org

Category

Transcript

Recommended