WOMEN OF FINLAND

Evening Post, Issue 88, 12 April 1924, Page 15

WOMEN OF FINLAND

THE WORK THEY DO.

. It is surprising that so few people choose Finland tor a summer tour. A more attractive country can scarcely be imagined, writes Cynthia .'Maguire in the ' 'London Daily Telegraph.'' Beyind its few.big towns, Helsingfors, Abo, Tammerfors, *Viborg, and the rest, it is just one great forest-with. lakes sefc in its midst, or, if you prefer it, lakeland, with forests springing out of it.' It is called by-the Finns, "The Land of a Thousand Lakes," and the name fitly describes it. The silver birches and pines at the water's edge rise from granite so bare in places that you wonder they can find a foothold, but they seem in-a strange way to share the hardiness of the people who live among them. . To get a picture of Finnish women I think you must N first glimpse the country, with its townlets of wooden houses and wind-swept streets, its forests, and its waterways. • Finnish women enjoy unusual freedom, and some'say that centuries of struggle against foreign domination account for this. No professions in any case are banned to \ them, save curiously the Church, and in Helsingfors you meet university women wherever you go. It is good to see them m their college caps making their way over the cobbled streets, or starting for some excursion in company with men students. There was a frank comradeship about such little groups that I liked. The caps have white velvet tops in summer-time, and black ones in winter, while a large, black tassel is added when the student is taking a' course in engineering or architecture.. The latter subject I Was told is a very popular one among women! There are no restrictions as to what a woman may or may not learn; and degrees are conferred on both sexes equally, whilst Finnish women, of , course,- are both voters and members of the Diet.' As to manual workers, you come across them everywhere, and it is nothing to see women employed with men in weeding pathways or mending roads. I saw two old folks in Viborg chatting amicably as they laid granite sets, and everywhere the parks ands open spaces were' being "gardened".by women, who swept paths, and tended flower-beds ■in a most efficient manner. On the lakes, at the little stages, where the steariiers stopped,, it was often women who unloaded them, and in Abo I came across women builders at work, ■so busy that they scarcely looked up as I stood watching them. They were picturesque figures in their white or coloured head-kerchiefs, though I was 'surprised throughout Fin- \ land that the cumbersome skirt had not .been discarded for more practical at-tire.-Not anywhere did I see anything approaching our land-girls' costume. Nearly every woman in Finland has a job of some kind. There are women in shipping offices, behind bank counters, and on night trains, and as often as not, when you buy your ticket at the book-ing-office it is a woman who hands it out. The factories all employ them, and at a match factory I visited in Kuopio there was scarcely a man to be seen; women planed down the aspen logs, put them .through the cutting machine, made the boxes, papered them—with-the"'aid of machinery, of course—and finally packed them into the cases for overseas.' There was no operation they could not perform. They worked barefooted, as the peasants do, andjwore the some cotton head-dress: On the land, in the farmsteads which lie hidden among the pine forests, women labour with men, digging potatoes, tilling the ground, or piling hay on* to queer' wooden erections where it dries in the sunshine. They are cheerful souls, and would be the last to tell you that their lot is a-hard one. . . •