Sanna Marin: The feminist PM who says trans people have a 'right to self-identify'

 

A year will soon have passed since Finland's new coalition government headed by five women started work. It has dealt efficiently with the coronavirus pandemic, while drafting an ambitious Equality Programme - a programme that states, among other things, that everyone has the right to determine their own gender identity.

It's a walk of less than 200m from the prime minister's office to the House of Estates, where Prime Minister Sanna Marin is about to chair a meeting on her government's signature Equality Programme.

She's not in the mood for small talk, but who would be on their first week back to work after a honeymoon? The short break at an undisclosed location in Finland followed a surprise August wedding, quickly arranged against the backdrop of a global pandemic, to the father of her toddler.

A photo of Sanna Marin, in her long-sleeved Finnish couture satin wedding dress, embracing husband Markus Raikkonen, a former professional footballer and her partner of 16 years, was an unexpected post on her active, and very personal, Instagram account. She'd previously shared a photo of herself breastfeeding her daughter Emma.

The couple stood with arms around each other, smiling broadly, in the picturesque grounds of Kesaranta, the official prime ministerial Helsinki residence, an ornate wooden villa on the banks of the Baltic Sea.

It was rapidly shared by political editors and fashion bloggers, podcasters and high-school students - the second photo of Sanna Marin in less than a year to make an instant impact.

A dozen or so reporters are waiting on the steps of Finland's House of Estates, a Renaissance building where the coalition government meets behind closed doors.

"I don't prepare what I say to them," Sanna Marin says as she approaches them, her female bodyguard walking behind. "They'll ask me anything and I'll answer honestly."

There'll be a lot more questions about her personal life this week perhaps?

"No. They want to know about the issues, we have a lot going on," she replies firmly. "Maybe they'll ask at the end."

Some of the reporters are wearing masks, a few are holding extendable boom mics. All snap to attention as she walks up the other side of the cordoned steps to face them.

She's the first politician to arrive at the meeting, and she's right - the Finnish media asks her about the issues.

And four hours later, after the meeting, she stops outside to talk to them again.

She is the last politician to leave.

The first photo of Sanna Marin that went viral was taken more than 200 days earlier, in December 2019, on the first day of her new job. As Finland's new and youngest-ever prime minister, the then 34-year-old Sanna Marin stood smiling broadly, next to the other politicians who would be leading her centre-left coalition government.

They were all women. At the time the photo was released, only one leader of the five-party coalition was over the age of 34.

Standing at the podium with her cabinet, she told a sea of photographers that she represented a younger generation and that she welcomed the international media attention. It was an opportunity to show the world "who we Finns are".

The message reached those outside traditional political circles.

Guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine posted a photo of the coalition on his Instagram page, outing Sanna Marin as a fan of his American rock band. She confirmed the sentiment in a millennial manner, by liking his post.

Qatar 'identifies parents of baby abandoned at Doha airport'

 

media captionQatar passenger thought plane was ‘hijacked’

Qatar says it has identified the parents of a baby who was abandoned last month in a bin at Doha's airport.

A woman from "an Asian country" fled abroad after dumping the infant, public prosecutors said, adding that efforts were under way to extradite her.

A DNA test confirmed that an Asian man was the father, they added.

The prosecutors said officials had also been charged over the invasive exams carried out on women passengers during the initial search for the mother.

There was international outrage after a group of women flying to Sydney - including citizens of Australia, the UK and New Zealand - complained that they were checked for evidence that they had recently given birth.

• Qatar to prosecute over 'invasive exams' of women
• Qatar to investigate 'invasive exams' of women
• 'Grossly disturbing' strip-searches anger Australia

Qatar's government said the incident began after a newborn baby girl was found in a plastic bag in a rubbish bin at Hamad International Airport's departures lounge on 2 October. The discovery triggered an immediate search for the parents, including on 10 planes in the vicinity.

Several women on board a Sydney-bound Qatar Airways flight said they were ordered to disembark, taken to ambulances on the tarmac, and told to remove their underwear for an examination.

The women said they were given no information by officials and that they did not have an opportunity to provide informed consent.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison described the incident as "appalling" and "unacceptable".

His Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa Al Thani, said standard procedures were violated and expressed his "sincerest apology for what some female travellers went through".

IMAGE COPYRIGHTREUTERS

image captionFemale passengers were forced to disembark a Sydney-bound Qatar Airways flight

On Monday, public prosecutors in Qatar announced that they had filed criminal charges against a number of employees working in the airport security department.

The officers had broken the law "by summoning female medical staff to conduct external examinations of some female passengers", and faced up to three years in prison if convicted, a statement said.

The prosecutors said they had also charged the mother of the child - who survived the ordeal - with attempted murder, and that they were "taking the appropriate legal action within the international judicial co-operation to arrest the fugitive".

She faces up to 15 years in prison if she is extradited and convicted.

"Investigations revealed that the infant's mother, who holds the nationality of an Asian country, had a relationship with another person of the nationality of one of the Asian countries," the statement said.

"The father of the infant admitted he had a relationship with the infant's mother, and that she had sent him a message and a photo of the newborn infant immediately after her birth," it added.

"The letter included her saying that she had [abandoned] the infant she had given birth to and fled to her country."

It is understood that the father is still in Qatar. It is not clear whether he faces any charges.

The baby is being taken care of by Qatari authorities.

French rugby legend Dominici dies in park tragedy

 

IMAGE COPYRIGHTREUTERS

image captionDominici played 67 times for France and in recent years had become a familiar figure on TV and radio

Ex-France rugby international Christophe Dominici has been found dead in tragic circumstances in a park.

Dominici, 48, was best known for helping France knock out the New Zealand All Blacks in the 1999 Rugby World Cup.

A witness saw him climb the roof of a disused building at Saint-Cloud park near Paris on Tuesday before falling, officials say.

Prosecutors have opened an inquiry into the cause of his death.

Dominici played 67 times for his country and won the French championship five times with Stade Français before retiring in 2008. In recent years he had worked as a rugby pundit for French radio and TV.

His 1999 World Cup semi-final performance spurred France to a sensational comeback, as he darted down the left of the pitch and seized the ball ahead of two New Zealand defenders to score a try. The All Blacks were leading the game at the time and had the brilliant Jonah Lomu in their line-up.

Known as Domi, he earned a reputation for weaving runs that could change the course of a match. He played in four Six Nations-winning teams and won two Grand Slams.

• Dominici quits international game

His death has stunned French rugby.

In a 2009 Le Monde interview, he said rugby "let me understand many things - respect for life, people and oneself, along with the values of humility and combat. I was aggressive and put that to collective use. Now I have far more wisdom and maturity."

The Indian bride who wore a pantsuit to her wedding

 

IMAGE COPYRIGHTSANJANA RISHI

Sanjana Rishi says she wore a vintage, powder-blue pantsuit to her traditional Indian wedding recently "simply because I love suits".

But, with her choice of wedding outfit, she also delivered a bold fashion statement - that made many wonder whether more brides would ditch traditional clothing in favour of the power suit.

In the West, bridal pantsuits have caught on in the past few years. Designers are promoting trousers in their wedding collections, and they've received celebrity endorsement too. Last year, Game of Thrones actress Sophie Turner wore a pair of white trousers when she married musician Joe Jonas in Las Vegas.

But, Ms Rishi's outfit was highly unusual for India - where brides usually dress up in silk saris or elaborate lehengas (long skirt-blouse-scarf combos). The preferred colour is red and many are embroidered with expensive gold or silver thread.

"I've never come across an Indian bride dressed like this," says Nupur Mehta Puri, former editor of a bridal magazine. "Brides usually like to wear Indian attire along with the traditional jewellery from their mothers and grandmothers.

"This was something very new. And she really stood out."

An Indian-American entrepreneur, Ms Rishi, 29, married Delhi businessman Dhruv Mahajan, 33, on 20 September in the capital, Delhi.

She had worked as a corporate lawyer in the US before returning to India last year and the couple were living together for close to a year.

They had planned a wedding in September in the US - where the bride's brother and most of her friends live - and a second traditional Indian wedding in Delhi in November.

But then Covid happened and their plans "got completely derailed".

IMAGE COPYRIGHTSANJANA RISHI

Unlike America, there is little acceptance of live-in relationships in India and Ms Rishi says that, although her parents are "incredibly progressive, there was a lot of external pressure from friends, neighbours and extended family to formalise the relationship.

So, in late August, "one fine morning I woke up and said, 'let's just get married'".

Ms Rishi says the moment she thought of getting married, she knew exactly what her outfit was going to be.

"I knew I was going to wear a pantsuit, and I knew exactly which one," she told me.

Ms Rishi, who "believes in environmentally sustainable fashion" and generally buys a lot of second-hand clothes, says she had seen the suit in a boutique in Italy a long time ago.

"It was a pre-loved vintage suit, made in the 1990s by Italian designer Gianfranco Ferré. I was surprised and delighted to know that it was still available when I decided to get married."

While working as a corporate lawyer in the US, suits were her choice of clothing because all the "strong modern women I idolised" wore them too.

"I have always thought that there is something very powerful about a woman in a pantsuit. I loved them and I wore them all the time."

It also made sense, she says, since the wedding was a small intimate affair, attended by only 11 people including the bride and the groom and the priest.

"It was just our parents and grandparents. The wedding took place in Dhruv's backyard. Everyone was very casually dressed, it would have been really awkward if I was dressed up in an elaborate wedding costume. I would have looked so overdressed."

IMAGE COPYRIGHTSANJANA RISHI

Mr Mahajan says he hadn't anticipated his fiancée turning up in a pantsuit.

"Until I saw her, I had no idea what she'd be wearing, but it really didn't matter because I knew that whatever Sanj wore, she'd rock it."

In fact, he says when he first saw her, "I didn't even notice at first that she was wearing trousers, all I noticed was how stunning she looked. She looked angelic, absolutely gorgeous".

"I can go on with more adjectives," he laughs.

Ms Rishi's wedding outfit has created a stir on social media.

After she posted some images on Instagram, friends and followers complimented her on her looks - they called her stunning, beautiful, awesome and "the coolest bride".

Fashion designers and fashionistas, too, approved of her choice.

"OMG, how great do you look!!!" wrote designer Masaba Gupta; and Rhea Kapoor, Bollywood producer and actress Sonam Kapoor's sister, described her look as "awesome".

Anand Bhushan, one of India's best-known contemporary womenswear designers, told the BBC he loved Ms Rishi's outfit and that "it is a lovely way for a bride to look".

"When I saw her photograph, the first thing that went through my mind was, "if Carrie Bradshaw [one of the protagonists in Sex and the City] was Indian, she would dress exactly like this for her wedding."

IMAGE COPYRIGHTSANJANA RISHI

But then some bridal accounts shared her pictures and the trolls began trashing her.

In the comments, they said she had brought a bad name to Indian culture, and warned her husband that he was stuck with an attention-seeker who would do anything in the name of feminism. Some said she would never understand Indian traditions because her mind had been influenced by the Western culture. Some "even told me to go kill myself".

Ms Rishi says she doesn't understand the criticism since "Indian men wear pantsuits at weddings all the time and nobody questions them - but when a woman wears it then it gets everyone's goat".

"But I guess it's because women are always held to stricter standards," she says.

And it's not just in India. Women's fight to wear trousers has been long and bitter and it goes on globally, with many cultures, even modern ones, frowning upon women who dare to ditch dresses.

Until 2013, it was illegal for women to wear trousers in France, though the ban had been ignored for decades.

In South Korea, female students were only recently told that they could buy a set of trousers to replace the skirts that came as standard with their uniforms.

• 'Our love is love, not jihad'
• 'They asked if we were wearing clothes underneath'
• How Covid-19 changed the 'big fat Indian wedding'

Female students in North Carolina in the US had to go to court to be allowed to wear trousers in school, even in the harsh winter cold. In Pennsylvania, an 18-year-old took on her school for her right to wear trousers last year and won.

A similar resistance to women wearing trousers continues in India.

"Though women in India have worn some sort of stitched trousers or pyjamas for centuries, outside of big metropolitan cities, many conservative families do not allow women to wear trousers or jeans," Mr Bhushan says.

"In a society dominated by patriarchy, men have become very insecure about women, so they want to dictate women's behaviour, their reproductive rights, how they talk and laugh and what they wear," he adds.

IMAGE COPYRIGHTSANJANA RISHI

Although Ms Rishi says by wearing a pantsuit, she wasn't trying to make a political statement, she acknowledges that she may have ended up doing it unwittingly.

"I realise that not all women, at least in India, are free to wear what they please. Once I put out my photographs on Instagram, a lot of women wrote back saying that, looking at my pictures, they had also got the courage to stand up to their parents or in-laws about what to wear at their wedding.

"At one level I was very pleased to hear this, but at another level I was also a little concerned. I was thinking, 'oh no, I'm causing problems in other people's lives or in other people's homes.'"