Eeva Jokinen

University of Jyväskylä

Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences

PO Box 35

40351 Jyväskylä, Finland

email:

 

 

 

 

 

Sexual Difference in Marriage in the 1970s. Interrogating Women’s Magazines.

 

A paper to be presented at The 4th European Feminist Research Conference

Bologna, September 28^th  to October 1^st 2000         

 

 

 

 

 

At the Summer Cottage

 

I woke up in the morning hearing the rain drops drum on the roof. The roof belongs to a summer hut, which my parents built in the early 1960s. Now my father is dead, and I have inherited the modest house and the small piece of land around it. And this house is where I found the magazines.

             We spent summer holidays and weekends here when I was in my teens, that is in the early 1970s. My mother was about as old as I am now; my children the same age my brother and I were at that time. When my family and I used to come here we would spend a lot of time reading magazines – that is, my mother and I would. Now, when I leaf through the articles I am struck by their familiarity. I imagine I must have read them quite carefully considering how well I remember their content.

             The magazines are clearly more serious than contemporary women’s magazines. Interviews are long and respectful. There are plenty of articles about celebrities, such as models, actresses and pop stars, but contrary to the tendency today, they do nothing more than perhaps hint at unpleasant subjects, like divorce, alcoholism and adultery. There are also interviews with influential women and men in politics – very pertinent. The articles about fashion are amusing, because the clothes and the hairstyles seem obviously old-fashioned as compared to today. There is much less talk of food in the articles from the 1970s than in today’s magazines.

             The late 1960s and early 1970s were the decades when things really began to happen in terms of Finnish equality politics. According to Raija Julkunen (1999, 88-89), “the long 1960s” was a leap of modernisation that encompassed the entire Finnish society, and it brought with it new social and gender policies (which were, and still are, intertwined, of course). The Committee on the Position of Women considered the most significant social goal to be that “men and women be equal in earning their own livelihoods.”In order for this to happen, it was crucial that a comprehensive day-care system be established. The Child-Care act of 1973 was moderate, but proclaimed, however, that waged work by mothers of small children was morally acceptable – this, of course, at a time “when many a mother struggled to maintain tai define her place both with her own morals and her husband,” as Julkunen formulates (1999, 89).

             Other important reforms for women were the liberal abortion law (1970), contraception advise for all (1972), separate taxation for married people (1974), many improvements in maternity leave laws (1971-82), separate paternity leave (1978),  fathers’ rights to parental leave (1980), the abolition of restrictions on women in government posts (1972-1976), the equalisation of the legal status of illegitimate children, children of divorced parents and children born in wedlock. (Julkunen 1999,89.)

             One of my motives for writing this story is personal.  I wanted to learn something about the culture and space of sexual difference during the time when I was in my early teens and my mother was a wife, a mother and a school teacher. The Finnish gender equality “pact” was under negotiation during those years. Did the waves of this negotiation reach me and my family in the rural village where we lived in the Eastern corner of Finland? Women’s magazines are, perhaps, the most obvious messengers, if there were any. But did the women’s magazines take part in these negotiations? If they did, how explicit was their participation? How was sexual difference constructed in the magazines? Did they speak about gender differences, equality, women’s rights, etc.? How was sexual difference built implicitly by signifying some things as feminine and others as masculine? Was the sexual difference based on hierarchy?

             It was not purely by accident that I came upon these magazines. I was led to find them by the fact that I have, together with Soile Veijola, conducted research on sexual difference in the printed media.[1] We studied marriage and divorce in contemporary Finnish women’s magazines and afternoon papers. The study was based on the idea that marriage (and hence divorce) arranges genders, generations, economies, desires, work and sexualities. The arrangement is neither natural nor “functional,” but rather is the result of power struggles. In spite of the fact that family law, both in Finland and in many other countries, has become extremely liberated over the last 20 years, heterosexual marriage remains the main organiser of relations between the genders.

             One aspect in our research was to closely read so-called “advisory texts,” in other words, articles in which experts such as psychologists, sociologists and therapists gave advice on how to lead a proper and fulfilled life, in our case as a divorced or separated person. Given that marriage and divorce are gender arrangements, our reading of the advice columns revealed something quite odd: they rarely referred explicitly to gender. This means that the texts were about “people,” “human beings,” “individuals” and “spouses” – not about men and women. When, occasionally, someone “blurted out” a comment about gender, it tended to be constructed in a way that it recycled conventional gender roles (for example, “In the past, women were women and men were men.”)

             There were very few attempts made by the magazines to really examine divorce as a process concerning two separate genders, two gendered identities, two gendered cultures. There were also very few attempts made to examine divorce also as a social and economic process. Our argument is that this distorted image arises from the general illusion of the existence of gender equality. Or more precisely, it arises from the general fear of gender conflict, which has its historical roots at the early 1970s. When women renegotiated gender roles, they negotiated with the welfare state, not with men. Men were left in peace. (Rantalaiho 1994, 26.)

             Why did the women of the late 1960s and early 1970s try so hard to avoid gender conflict? Why was the general atmosphere so compromising, as Rantalaiho (1994, 26) reckons? Perhaps it is because it was the fastest and most secure means for women to gain freedom and rights at that particular time; women were already present in politics and the labour market – due to the specificity of Finnish political and social history. Maybe another reason is that gender polarisation was such an odd theme anyway – in Finland the fundamental similarity between men and women has always been emphasised, and gender polarisation developed late and formed only a thin cultural layer, as Anu Pylkkänen (1999, 38) maintains.

            

 

At Home

 

The rest of my holiday was spent going through piles of old clothes and boxes of paper, some of which belonged to my father and his mother, both of whom are dead. These documents represented the “mystery” of sexual difference in a society that was engaged in full blown war (in which my grandfather died) – at a time no more than 55 years ago.  They also represent a short period of time right after the war, in which the tendencies leaning toward the ideology of housewifery faced the age of gender equality – or, more precisely, so-called “equality”. In the 1960s my mother gave birth to my brother, had a month’s maternity leave plus three month’s summer holiday, which obviously means they had done some family planning, after which she returned to work as a schoolteacher. My father was a carpenter, and took letter courses in supervision of building constructions. My parents dreamed of building their own home, which they did in the early 1970s.

             Now somehow forced to think about the gender roles of my parents, I realise that I have not often done so before. My mother was a working mother, and it probably never even occurred to me that it could be any other way. We lived in the countryside, where all women and men always seemed to be working. But of course the gender roles were indeed there. My mother loved reading (I remember her lying in bed in the afternoons reading before she started to cook dinner), although she also did everything expected of women and mothers in those days: cook, clean, make clothes for herself and us, bake, preserve, pickle, sing in a chorus, be a secretary in the local Martta Association, etc. She did have some help from a variety of “girls,” 16 to 18 year old young women who helped her during the work-week. My father was a hard working man who had endured an extremely poor childhood and youth as a war orphan. He certainly could not have been overly radical in his opinions of gender roles.

             We have been able to learn about the public lives of women in the early 1970s from research, although we really know very little about their private lives. What did people really think about families, marriage, sex and gender roles, motherhood, etc.? The gender equality pact focussed mainly on working life and political rights – but what about marriage and divorce? The aforementioned list of reforms clearly fails to mention marriage.

             In one of the magazines,[2] Me Naiset (“We Women”), the reform of divorce legislation is mentioned in two issues in the letters-to-the-editor section, entitled “From us to us.” A woman writing under the pseudonym “Experienced” writes: “Divorce is already actually too easy.  Women neither know their rights nor how to stand up for themselves.  The bottom line is that the reason behind this might be the female instinct to preserve the home, which then forces women to submit to almost inhumane demands.”

             This extremely interesting piece of information is a part of the public debate following the release of a report published by a “marriage committee” in 1972. The committee had set the increase in equality between men and women as its main goal, and it advocated new, more liberal divorce legislation, which included the possibility to divorce without any specific grounds (no-fault development). The reform did not, however, actually become implemented until the late 1980s, and we can perhaps find one of the reasons for this hidden in the aforementioned letter-to-the-editor: movements toward emancipation (such as women’s rights) easily became mixed with conservative views about female instincts. This mix characterised the arrangement of values to an even greater extent: according to Riitta Jallinoja (1984, 80-81), the time between 1967 and 1975 was a period of “big changes” in terms of the ideology (“values”) of the family: individualistic values were strengthening, but there also still existed a specific discourse surrounding family-oriented values, which one might even say was once again raised during this time.

             As Kirsti Kurki-Suonio (1999, 422-423) puts it, the great move which was taking place in Finland in general provided the background for a situation in which different social groups faced the wave of reform from totally different perspectives. Opinions surrounding the topic of divorce were rapidly changing: in 1969 a mere 17% of the population were accepting of divorce, whereas only three years later that number jumped to 33%. In 1979 that number surprisingly dropped again to 21%, preceding the beginning of the more conservative 1980s.

             According to Jallinoja (1984, 73), individualistic and thus, to a certain extent, equality-positive values were strongly supported publicly. Family-oriented values, however, prevailed in personal and private spheres.

 

 

In the Magazines

 

I have been dwelling on these old magazines. But then again the early 1970s was a really interesting period. I will try to summarise what I found concerning gender; the type of contradictions surrounding the sexual difference related to marriage and divorce, various tendencies, as well as any discernible changes between old and contemporary magazines.

             The magazine “Jaana” appears to be the most ignorant regarding the debate surrounding gender roles, equality and marriage. It reports on celebrities and their marriages, but fails to ask any pertinent questions. Divorce is only mentioned a couple of times, and when it is mentioned it is only in the sense of referring to something like “his first marriage ended in 1965”. However, quite surprisingly, there is an interview with Hertta Kuusinen in one of the issues. Hertta Kuusinen was an active leftist politician, who was, among other things, the president of the International Association for Democratic Women. “Hertta Kuusinen will celebrate her 70^th birthday in a Moscow hospital,” the interview begins. Kuusinen is asked about (amongst other things, such as her youth, her mother, her father, her favourite places and love) a woman’s lot and a man’s way! The choice of words is revealing, of course, but Hertta Kuusinen is not provoked and answers: “Woman have yet to gain real equality anywhere.  Even in the Soviet Union, where equal pay has been fully realised, the working woman continues to carry the brunt of responsibility in the dealings of everyday life than men. There are still countries in which women continue to be completely oppressed, with no opportunities to study or work, and no independence at all.” And what does Kuusinen think of the man’s way? “It should go along next to woman’s way – or actually, it should be the same for both men and women. It would be for his own good, too, although men short-sightedly may imagine the opposite.”

             Another magazine, Eeva, seems to take quite a radical editorial stance on the subject of women’s rights. This becomes most evident in the column called “storehouse,” in which editors comment on topics of current interest. For example, in May 1974, a survey on women’s hobbies and interests is commented. The survey  shows that women are most interested in issues related to the home and church. This does not satisfy the editor,[3] who snaps (with irony, nonetheless): “Let us be appalled! There is nothing wrong with the issues of home and churc an sich. But how narrow! We can read from the same research that men tend overwhelmingly to be interested in things outside of the home – hence, it is no wonder that divorces ensue. The friendship between husbands and wives cannot survive is the husband is always watching television and the wife spends her time just as closely watching the stitching of her needlepoint.”

             The tendency to push women toward an awakening of some sort – encouraging them to go “out” and orient themselves toward activities outside of the home – is explicitly outlines in many of the editorials. In another of the aforementioned “Storehouse” columns, an editor refers quite positively to Aleksandra Kollontai’s book The Status of Women  (1922; translated into Finnish 1973), which is a Marxist feminist pamphlet! And yet another excerpt from the same issue reads: “It is terrible for one to anchor oneself within the four walls of the home, caring only for others and never for oneself.”

             The message is simultaneously individualistic and completely non-individualistic. It is individualistic in the sense that it urges female readers to take care of themselves as opposed to always caring for others.  But at the same time it is collective, social and even political in the sense that it urges women to go out an join a group of some kind or another – be it a social group, a study group – or at least to “go out” via television and become interested in “common” matters.) Another example can be seen when a woman reader writes in to asks for advice about her situation, in which she feels that she merely “performs the marriage acts she is supposed to perform, but without emotion,” nor is there any sense “of being a deep part of something.” Leelia advises: “Couldn’t you join a social group where you could meet other awakening people like yourself?  Not all the people are sleeping the dream of maternity, although it seems that your circle of friends is….  If your relationship with your husband and children is strained and distant, it is, of course, partly your own doing. Listen to other human beings when they are near. And reach out your hand to stroke the other person’s skin. Why should just other people win over their inhibitions? [4]

             Another woman writes and tells Leelia that she after revealing to her husband that she had had an affair, he is now sulking and overreacting in general. Leelia answers: “You were so foolish to tell your husband, and now you are upset that he is taking it so seriously? What is wrong with these women? What makes them think it is their “duty” to tell their husbands that they have fallen in love with another man? Oh dear girls, your husbands are not such blabbermouths.”

             Leelia is an often used name for a “counsellor,” who dishes out advice about life and ethical behaviour like an old friend, a sister or an aunt. Leelia’s expertise or professionalism is not the point, but rather she is streetwise – or, as the more accurate Finnish expression was at the time: these wise women used healthy rural common sense when giving out advice.

             In another magazine, Kotiliesi, this wise woman is referred to as “Little Mother,” and her advice is more conformist across the board. Little Mother’s column is a bit weird, because there are no questions – only answers. So, as a reader its very difficult for me to know what is really going on. The following advise is, if I conclude right, to a young woman of seventeen, who has had an unfortunate, perhaps even violent, love affair with an older man. “Even a young schoolgirl has to be responsible for her conduction, what to accept -- and what to refuse. I hope you have become wiser as a result of this experience, and that you now concentrate on school and stick to the company of your schoolmates.”

             Little Mother seems to have received a lot of letters from battered women, based on the fact that out of my small sample, three or four answers give advice on such cases. The tone of advise varies from “You need help as soon as possible; this can not go on,” to ambivalence “Your husband is not normal. But with the female quality to give, you say you love your husband anyway...”.

             There are no explicit references to violence against women in any of the magazines I found at the summer cottage. In this aspect nothing seems to have changed in thirty years: the silence surrounding violent behaviour by men against women they know is deep seeded.

             An evident shift has occurred in terms of the role of expert knowledge. In the old magazines there were hardly any interviews with experts such as psychologists, sociologists, therapists or other counsellors, all of which are commonplace in today’s magazines. The expertise in the early 1970s was represented only in the columns of readers inquiries to doctors or lawyers on the one hand, and in columns like Leelia and Little Mother on the other. There is only one article in which expert knowledge is used in the contemporary sense, which I will soon examine in more detail.[5]

             In addition to the proliferation of expert culture, there has been another clear change – namely, sex. Sexual needs and habits, love making and marital satisfaction were discussed extensively in the early 1970s. The discussion surrounding sex was somehow oddly straightforward. For example, in Eeva, there is “A Major Report on Married Life in Finland.” Ten wives and ten husbands provide “a humble report” on their marital life, of which sex is a central theme: “I have been unfaithful.” “We have intercourse 6-8 times a month.”)  “I am more active sexually.” “My husband caresses me enough, and doesn’t interrupt coitus until I have an orgasm.” I will return to the marriage report later in this the paper.

             In the 1960s and 1970s, the phenomenon called “the marriage of conscience” was born. It referred to cohabitation, and once again the theme is most predominantly covered in Eeva. For example, there is an interview of a couple, Stina and Mikko Kuoppamäki, who have a “different marrieage,” which means that they cohabit. The reporter writes that Mikko has plans to see the world, and that he is unsure of how long this will take. Then the female reporter puts herself on the stage and explicitly comments on Mikko’s plan: “This would certainly not succeed if he were a married man. His wife would say that this is no way for a married person to act. I have the right to know where you go and for how long. And what about the financial plans for the time you are gone? The whole marriage of consciousness seems to be a diabolic institution planned by a man for his own advantage. Stina can’t say anything, because its been decided that everybody is allowed to do as he or she wants.”

             We can read into the reporter’s comments that the marriage contract included moral duties for men, and that cohabitation was already regarded as an institution, although with less duties. In the same issue of Eeva, there in an article in which famous women were asked about their opinions about marriages of consciousness. More specifically, they are asked whether they would support their daughters’ living in a cohabitant relationship.) Of the five mothers polled, (two actresses, two presidents of women’s organisations, a town councillor) three would accept the idea without any reservations whatsoever, while the other two would prefer to see their daughters properly married, although they would accept their daughters’ decisions no matter what.

             To summarise, there seems to be a great deal of ambivalence and contradiction with regard to the topics of marriage, divorce and the arrangements between the genders in general.

             (1) Part of the media was strongly advocating individual rights and encouraging women to go out into the world. Women, or “women’s culture” was seldom mentioned except in a pejorative sense. Motherhood was not an issue at all. At the same time, most women’s daily lives were based on old gender role marriage values: they cooked, shopped, cleaned, took care of daily chores and tried to save their marriages. The “offer” to change their situation was for them to take on a role or style that had previously been reserved for men: to go out and get involved in social activities, to study, to become politically active, to remain silent about adultery.

             (2) Marriage of consciousness (cohabitation) was accepted in principle, but raised confusion in practice. The divorce legislation was under debate: conservative opinions were blended with logical and reasoned suspicions about women’s situation under the new, more liberal and totally individualistic laws. The same arguments, especially “equal choices” were used against and pro the more liberal laws.

             (3) Sex and intercourse were discussed in such an open manner that many readers certainly found such commentary embarrassing to read. (Actually, there were critical reader’s comments regarding “too much sex talk” etc.) They were discussed only in relation to marriages or marriages of conscience. Neither sexual abuse nor homosexuality were mentioned at all, with the exception of implicit reference in some letters addressed to “layman” experts.

             (4) It seems that gender was not a politically incorrect word at that time. Women and men, and their different positions and postures in marriage, divorce and gender arrangements, were recognised. At the same time, at certain points women were strongly encouraged to take male positions and postures.

 

 

 

Wedlock

 

There is a “broad report on marriage in Finland” in Eeva. Ten women and ten men were interviewed by an editorial group (made up of four women). The readers are not told, what questions were asked, but one can easily deduce that they were things like: How did you meet your wife/husband? How did it turn out? What have been the problems and joys? Money? Emotions? How do your interests diverge? How is your sex life? Are you monogamous, or do you accept infidelity?) Do you accept fidelity? The editors rewrote the answers in so that they sound more like a free-flowing conversation or confession really. The report is extensive and covers almost 20 pages in two separate issues.

             In the following, I will read the marriage report guided by the question concerning the space between genders. We already learnt that there was a tendency to urge women to attempt to acquire and inhabit male positions. Was there any space left for a female woman, a woman who identifies with other women and her own gender, as Irigaray[6] might put it. How did women talk about their femaleness and femininity; and what about the males and masculinity? And, conversely, how did men describe the female/feminine and male/masculine in their stories? What kinds of freedoms were there? What restrictions?

             My honest first reaction to the stories was one of nausea, and I could not stop thinking about the “little woman” I used to be, who devoured the narratives some thirty years. Of course, at that time I did not yet realise that the narratives were actually told from the perspective of the editors, and that the coldness and flatness by which especially men seem to describe their marriages and feelings, is bound to that narrative trick. This is important to notice also now. What we learn from the narratives is not how things really were in the 1970s, but how they were represented in this certain context – which was, however, obviously quite influential. This report was actually constructing sexual difference as well as examining it, and it was, in the first place, facilitated by a specific arrangement between the sexes.

              The report on husbands was published first, with a headline addressing women: “Listen wife, your husband is talking.” All ten “confessions” follow the traditional manuscript of marriage. The men describe meeting a beautiful woman and wanting to marry her (in two cases the woman “forced” the man into marriage). There may have been some degree of romance, although more often than not the expectations were more “realistic” – things were steady, although perhaps a bit boring. In two cases, the husband had become discontent, because his wife had become “too autonomous”. Most men reported that they do not participate in housework, except for the “hardest jobs”. Six men stated that they have been unfaithful, one says he has not been, two neither admit or deny their infidelity, and one says that he was unfaithful during a period of separation. None of the unfaithful men regret their actions. (They are explicit in this.) All of the men say that they are more sexually active than their wives. Some wish that their wives were more “interested in sex.” Surprisingly, many complain about wives who are not interested enough in politics and sports. Surprisingly, many comment on their wives’ looks and style of dress.

             Concerning the space between the sexes, a lot of remarks imply an ideal of a minimised woman’s space. “The naturalness of my wife has disappeared. She has grown stubborn. ...(I) would like to be the master of the house. I don’t like that my wife tries to loosen my grip.” “She votes for the same party as I, she even votes for the same man.” “A wife’s place is by the fireplace.” “I have been able to crush her opinions.” – One of the men specially notes that he does not try to mold his wife’s opinions!

             Further, there are a lot of remarks that refer to contempt for the female. “I totally accept my own untruthfulness. Not my wife’s.” “(I)t (=she) says that news reports are nonsense and can’t stand to talk about politics, which I am very interested in. She should at least read papers to learn. One can’t expect that I should begin to count the stitches in her knitting.” “I never buy flowers for her, it (=she) does not eat them.” (In these cases, the pronoun “it” is really used to refer to “her”. “The small fights take place on Wednesdays, when my wife watches Peyton Place. I always ask, jokingly: Is Peyton Place really more important than me?” “We don’t kiss or hug, and I don’t miss that kind of closeness. If my wife started to do that, tenderness would become disgusting.” “I despise her primitive nature.”

             Hence, the traditional, patriarchal femininity is despised (the lack of interest in politics and economics, an interest in knitting and romance, to expect flowers from men) by the men who practise this same order. Notably, tenderness and primitivity, which are clearly something in the feminine side of that order, are rejected very strongly: disgusting, causing contempt.

             But, among all the constraints on women’s space, surprisingly, half of the men said that they did not or would not care if their wives were unfaithful! What should I think about this kind of tolerance toward women’s possibilities? It is quite confusing: a man who “wants to be the master of the house” says that his wife is free to have affairs with other men... All I can say is that this is not necessarily a sign of real respect for sexual difference.

             (In the meantime, I reread all of the narratives in search of clear signs of respect of sexual difference, but I am unable to find anything convincing. Some of the men say that their wives were very beautiful when they first met. Three men say that their sex life is very satisfying, or used to be: “In the beginning our sex life was hilarious. With it, I could like pierce a hole in me: I played and drew life never before. We would lie in bed, talking about art – I thought that is what it would always be like.”

 

*  *  *

 

The narratives of the wives are more divergent, but still quite depressing. The title of the article is: “I am a work of my husband’s hands, says the Finnish wife”, and, indeed, there are a couple of narratives that describe precisely that. “I know that I have always been forced to be submissive. My husband has never appreciated me. At least not before my studies. (...) I am more his child than his wife. He tells me how to dress and decides the colour of my nail varnish.”

             The most common themes in the wives’ stories are, however, money and the sharing of the housework, duties and freedom. Almost all the wives say that they fight with their husbands about money, although they do not blame their husbands; there simply is not enough money. One wife tells that the quarrels about money are caused by her constant waste of money. What the wives are blaming their husbands for is the unequal distribution of housework and the male “freedom to go” (to hobbies, meeting friends, hanging around) which they consider unfair. “My husband does not do housework without me asking him to, he never notices. (...) The husband is allowed to invest in his hobbies, even if the world around him is crumbling. I am not, and it makes me bitter sometimes.” The complaints also concern men’s involvement with their work. “Work has always been my husband’s preference. He has never been interested in me. I have been terribly lonely. I have begun to smoke and use alcohol, and this is something which gives him a reason to judge me and make snide remarks to me.” The women  also complain about their husbands not being interested in their wives’ work, and also their not being tender (often) enough. “I miss the tender words, although I have been accustomed from the very beginning that there will not be any. I have to be content with the twinkle in his eye. Sexually, we are very pleased with each other.”

             Some women tell that at first, they and their husbands were interested in totally different matters, but later, they, as wives, have learnt to become interested in their husbands’ interests. “We discuss a lot of union matters. My husband is head shop steward, and we get a lot of visits from his buddies, who come down to chat. Before, I was not at all interested, but now I listen, although I don’t participate. Not politics, but trade matters. Nowadays I am really interested in them. Even in the evenings, when he comes home from a late shift, he sometimes wants to talk business, and I am there to listen.” (There is a parallel story concerning free-time told by another woman: “We ski and go ice fishing together. I wait and see if he gets any fish.”)

             On the whole, women seem to speak a lot more about their husbands that men about their wives. However, the wives only praised their husbands in a few cases. Instead, they have a long list of complaints. They seem to know how they would like the situation to be, and if they are “submissive,” they seem to be able to articulate it. Still, they sound very “realistic” and moderate, if not pessimistic in their evaluations: “When the starting point has been realistic, the marriage corresponds to expectations.” “The marriage has become so commonplace – there is no glamour anymore. I imagine it might be different with another man, but I don’t know. (...) I would put work ahead of everything else, without a doubt. And the hobbies and contacts linked to work. Now there is home and family. But I always think that this is this time, and that’s it.”

             Three of the ten wives in this sample were house-wives, which is a bit lower than the average in Finland in the early 1970s. Working did not seem to be a problem to these women: they did not present hopes to leave the home or to have a career. There were, moreover, very few remarks from men regarding their being dissatisfied with the concept of their wives working. Hence, working outside the home was not a problem in women’s narratives (nor in many men’s), but the problem was the distribution -- or the lack of distribution -- of housework, and the feeling amongst the women that their husbands did not appreciate their interests or show affection outside of the bedroom, which, as such, was satisfying in most cases.

             In the wives’ narratives, space was given to men and masculinity. Women learnt to be interested in subjects that mattered to their husbands. Men were understood in their manhood in the following manner: “Nowadays I understand that if a person is virile and active in other areas, he is probably also virile and active sexually. Occasional slips are not worth bothering about. They easily happen to anyone.” (The same woman reflects her own “sexuality” after reporting that she has not yet been unfaithful: “If it were a question of a person I know, and the feeling is right and both people want it, then why not? I’m not that moral.” This is a common attitude. Half of the wives have been unfaithful in practice, too.)

             The main tendency that women give space to men and their gender, whereas men hardly made any attempt to understand their wives, does not, of course, surprise anyone. This is how patriarchy works: being a loyal wife (and mother) is the civic duty of all women. Both men and women recycle this notion in their marriage narratives. Instead, what I find most surprising is the tone and spirit of the tone and spirit of the narratives: they are harsh, “realistic” (meaning resigned and hopeless), laconic. There is nothing that would refer to humour, deep affection or the celebration of difference. Not even patriarchal echoes of enjoying femininity can be found in the women’s narratives. These women do not say that they are happy to be mothers, happy to be women, happy to form families – there is nothing like that at all.

             It is so sad. It is possible that the narratives were just edited to look like that. However, it is this form I, and thousands of other girls and women, read the sexual difference in marriage: indifference. Maybe the real and respecting difference was considered to be a luxury that was not granted to poor, Hard-working Finns.

 

 

In the Family

 

As I mentioned earlier, the expert knowledge was not used in its present volume. In my sample of eleven women’s magazines, there is only one article using an expert voice, and I will now have a glance at that, although it is a rare case. I examine whether men and women, or gender and sex, were explicitly mentioned, and if they were, what kind of sexual difference was under construction. (In the background lies the aforementioned observation regarding contemporary expert voices, in which the issue of gender is avoided even in the discussion of marriage and divorce.)

             The expert in question is Claes Andersson, who is introduced as a psychiatrist. The article also uses as its material Andersson’s play, called The Family. The references to the play are clearly made, but it remains unclear what Andersson’s role in the rest of the text is. It is mentioned, however, that “Claes Andersson is helping us” to reflect on questions like “why is our family unhappy”; “what is the measure of (un)happiness”, “who is to blame for the difficult times we are going through”, and “have we found the right subject to blame”.

             In the beginning, the family is described promisingly: “The family is a stage upon which the depression, anguish and power struggles between generations collide.” Later, the family institution is further analysed: “The family is in difficulties. Especially if it is middle-class or poor. The difficulties of the family been recognised this spring by many political parties in their formation of family policy; family policy has even gained the status of being the general incomes policy trading skin. But who is to blame?” The editor[7] then goes on counting possible factors, such as unemployment, the structural changes in society, taxation, invalid day-care, and high living expenses. This time, however, the aim is to “speak about what remains in the family” after bad circumstances are stripped away. The reporter wants to change the viewpoint in another way too: she rejects the option of searching for someone and something to blame, instead posing the question of what a happy family is like.

             The seven characteristics of a happy family are then presented and analysed. The first one concerns spouses: In the happy family, “the relationship between the spouses satisfies their sexual and emotional needs”. The ideal is discussed widely and gender-neutrally. Women and men are regarded as similar in relation to the family. Instead, the power arrangements between generations is present. The conflicts are heavily located in the gap between generations and in the processes of becoming adult and leaving the childhood family. (At that time, the average marital age was low: 22.7 years for women and two years more for men, which probably explains part of the tendency.)

             Gender becomes explicit in the next distinctive mark of a happy family: “Children are taken care of with warmth and understanding, and they are given the possibility to express their own feelings and needs without too much restriction.” Here, as parents, men and women gain a gendered existence in the following manner: “Also, the reasons for having a child might indeed impact that child.  Perhaps the mother wanted to have the child in order to punish or please her husband; or perhaps even just to gain general approval, or in order to fill the ideal family pattern.” After this statement, there is a long paragraph concerning the “disturbances in the role of woman” – things like the rejection of the child in order to concentrate on one’s own business, punishing the child, blaming the father, or even the other way around – concentrating exclusively on the baby or house-hold tasks.

             The father is not scrutinised to the same extent, although the observation is indeed made that the child can sometimes be the mark of masculinity for fathers, or even a bind to society. Furthermore, it is noted fathers often demand too much of their children without appreciating them for themselves.

             The other five characteristics of happy families all concern children and parents. Gender is mentioned a couple of times in references to mothers and fathers, boys and girls. Men and women in themselves remain unmentioned.

             Thus, we have here an interesting mix again: quite radical and critical talk about family relations without gender and sex, but with an emphasis on generational conflicts. And when gender does enter the picture, old stereotypes and norms are recycled: mothers can be "disturbed" away from their "natural" tasks whereas fathers are warned not to underline their masculinity too much with the help of the children. In addition to being a psychiatrist, Claes Andersson, the expert here, is also a writer, a leftists radical and an activist in the anti-psychiatric movement (and later also a politician, as well as a jazz musician of sorts.) But when colliding with gender in the age of the establishment of equality, even he presents gender via motherhood, and does so in a psycho-analytic sense.) This is in accordance with the general space of attitudes and values: ambivalence, confusion and contradiction.

             The current habit of avoiding speaking aloud about women and men in families and marriages has roots at least dating back to the early 1970s. It is impossible for me to discern without further investigation whether this habit was born in the 1970s or before.)

              

 

 

The Remains of a Detective

 

I can hardly wait to ask my mother whether she agrees with my conclusions. But before I can do that I have to mull over what these conclusions actually are. Two of them seem clear, and they are also parallel to other studies:

             Firstly, a mixture of confused individual women and men, and a straightforward equality discourse, was a prevailing condition. Some prominent magazines, in my collections it was mainly Eeva, and a number of reporters were heavily promoting gender equality based on the women’s possibilities to become liberated from the home and enter into the workforce, doing something that matters in spheres outside of the home. Everything that was bound to home, “femininity”, and weakness was rejected. Sexuality was an issue, although in a somewhat functional sense (it helps in the other areas of life). At the same time, a traditional mode of family life can be found in letters to the editor, and in the marriage report. This blend was the soil out of which the equality policy which materialised over the long 1960 would grow.

             Secondly, in connection to the first point, marriage was discussed in terms of wives and husbands in the letters to the editor and in the report based on personal narratives. However, gender was polished away in the expert discourse. And nowadays we are aware of some of the consequences of this type of mixture: know some of the consequences of this mixture: the liberation of family law did not happen before 1986; rape in marriage did not become illegal before the 1990s; the violent behaviour of men against women has not been discussed prior to the last few years. Officially, the private and individual conflicts between genders were and still are buried.) But so are the questions surrounding love and the ethics of sexual difference. There is a vast and overpowering sexuality in the media, although there is hardly any serious discussion surrounding the sexual cultures we live by or want to live by. There are maternity leaves and child care is well organised, but there is no real discussion about motherhood and its complex connections to female subjectivity.

             In addition I have one further conclusion of a more tentative nature: it is a new question, which was made possible by my inquiry into the magazines.) I am thinking of girls and the landscapes in which they grow up. The connection between media and behaviour is anything but simple, and I would not, for example, blame these magazines for any of the unhappiness in my own life, now would I blame my parents for letting me read them. Nor do I control what my own daughter reads. Instead, I think it would be worthwhile to more closely examine cultures and institutions from the viewpoint of girls, whether they be girls of today or women who used to be girls.) I know that the feminist movement has been accused of having a view that includes too much of a daughterly perspective, but it is not the same thing. What I am missing, is the perspective of young women as members of a broader group, such as “children” or “youth,” as opposed to only viewing them in relation to their families and especially their mothers.

 

 

 

References:

                                                                                       

 

Hearn, Jeff (1998) The Violences of Men. Sage: London, Thousand Oaks, new Delhi.

 

Irigaray, Luce (1993) Sexes and Genealogies. Columbia University Press: New York.

 

Irigaray, Luce (1996) I Love to You. Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History. Routledge: New York and London.

 

Jallinoja, Riitta (1984) Perhekäsityksistä perhettä koskeviin ratkaisuihin. In Elina Haavio-Mannila, Riitta Jallinoja and Harriet Strandell: Perhe, työ ja tunteet. WSOY: Juva, 37-110. (From ideals of the family towards family solutions)

 

Julkunen, Raija (1999) Gender, Work, Welfare State. In Women in Finland. Otava: Helsinki, 79-100.

 

Kurki-Suonio, Kirsti (1999) Äidin hoivasta yhteishuoltoon – lapsen edun muuttuvat tulkinnat. Suomalainen lakimiesyhdistys: Helsinki. (From maternal care to joint custody – the changing legal interpretations of the best interest of the child)

 

Pylkkänen, Anu (1999) Finnish Understandings of Equality. In Women in Finland. Otava: Helsinki, 24-38.

 

Rantalaiho, Liisa (1994) Sukupuolisopimus ja Suomen malli. In Anneli Anttonen, Lea Henriksson and Ritva Nätkin (eds) Naisten hyvinvointivaltio. Vastapino: Tampere, 9-30. (The gender pact and the Finnish model)