Radical sex role ideology and the Finnish gender role movement in the late 1960s

ABSTRACT An active discussion of gender roles and the need to renegotiate them took place in the late 1960s in Finland. While previous studies have associated this ‘sex role debate’ with the independent civic organisation Association 9, this article focuses on the wider gender role movement. The article analyses the interplay and differences among the Finnish Women’s Democratic League, the Committee for Women’s Status, and Association 9’s grassroots activism between 1965 and 1970. It demonstrates that similar ideas about sex roles were presented simultaneously in two public spheres: the dominant public, where the ideas were promoted by Association 9, and the people’s democratic counterpublic, which presented the goals of the Finnish Women’s Democratic League. Both discussions also influenced the work of the Committee for Women’s Status in Finland. These organisations had divergent modes of action, ranging from a civic association to party political organisation and parliamentary committee, but the theoretical premises of their conceptualisations of gendered societal structures had clear similarities. We show this by drawing on the archives of Association 9 and the Finnish Women’s Democratic League, including original documents such as minutes of meetings and newspaper and magazine clippings, and the Committee for Women’s Status’s White Paper.


Introduction
Nordic countries have been pioneers in gender equality and changes that are seen as distinctive accomplishments of the second-wave feminist movement were being implemented also in Finland in the early 1970s. These included the liberalisation of abortion that was an important goal for both the American and West-European feminist movement and the provision of affordable day care for small children that was a central aim especially in the Nordic countries. However, these accomplishments did not arise in the first instance from feminist ideology, but rather from the so-called sex role ideology and debate typical for the Nordic countries at this time. A change in attitudes was promoted by the participants in this debate, who used the term 'sex role' instead of 'woman question' or 'feminism' in order to stress that women's and men's roles were social constructions, and that men's roles, too, needed to be problematised. 1 They specifically criticised the idea that women and men had two distinct roles, with man as breadwinner and woman as mother. They argued that this separation of roles was a result of socialisation, not based on biological or psychological facts, and therefore women's and men's roles should be changed so that they both would be equally responsible for supporting the family and taking care of the children. 2 In Sweden and Finland in particular, several actors including academics, journalists, political parties, and other organisations adopted and promoted the new gender ideology at different levels of society, making important contributions to the institutionalisation of gender equality policy. 3 The debate also led to the establishment of the distinctive sex role associations Group 222 (Grupp 222) in Sweden and Association 9 (Yhdistys 9) in Finland. Previous studies of the Finnish sex role discussion have focused on Association 9, a non-governmental organisation that was active between 1966 and 1971. Scholars have viewed it as the main proponent of the radical sex role ideology, although it has been noted that the wider sex role movement included the radical left Finnish Women's Democratic League (Suomen Naisten Demokraattinen Liitto, SNDL), the women's and youth associations of other political parties, and the Finnish Committee for Women's Status, which was active during 1966-70. 4 This article offers a fresh analysis of the interplay and differences between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary activism within the SNDL, the Committee for Women's Status, and the grassroots activism of Association 9 in the promotion of gender equality in Finland between 1965 and1970. While we acknowledge Association 9's centrality to the Finnish sex role discussion, we complicate existing understandings of that discussion by analysing how the SNDL, a party-political women's organisation of the radical left, adopted contemporaneously a radical sex role ideology into its political agenda, and how that ideology was also present in the White Paper published by the Committee for Women's Status in 1970.
In parallel with female labour activists in the US, participants in the Finnish sex role movement did not call themselves feminists. Nevertheless, in this article we treat the 1960s sex role ideology as a part of feminist history. This is because we understand feminism as activism that recognises the existence of gender-specific subordination or discrimination against women, which questions the legitimacy of the present gender order. 5 This article thus follows recent studies that have argued for more inclusive conceptualisations of feminist agendas and participation, and which have demonstrated that the women's rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s included working women and had links to party political activism. 6 Although politically active women in left-wing parties in particular avoided calling themselves feministsthey regarded feminism as a right-wing ideologythey shared many ideas about women's oppression and liberation. Furthermore, feminist ideology and practices were developed through contact with politically active women in the New Left. 7 Read within this context, we argue that the SNDL did not simply adopt the sex role ideology developed by Association 9, but also debated it with the radical left and formulated its own version of sex role ideology, which corresponded with party political lines. Additionally, we critically review the relationships among Association 9, the SNDL, and the Committee for Women's Status. Previous literature has claimed that SNDL members were critical of Association 9's ideas, which they viewed as too conceptual and distant from working women's everyday lives, and that the SNDL therefore had more practical goals. 8 Contrary to this interpretation, our article demonstrates that alongside this practical emphasis, the SNDL's adaptation of sex role ideology was rooted in a sociological understanding of sex roles combined with a socialist understanding of class struggle. Both strands of thought were also present in the Committee for Women's Status's White Paper, which can be seen as a compromise among the viewpoints of all the parties involved in the committee.
Our interest here is in observing the late 1960s discussion of women's status and gender as a multi-sited process in which the ideas behind the radical sex role ideology were presented, elaborated, and negotiated in different public spheres. The three actors considered in this article offer slightly different viewpoints onto this process, but when analysed alongside each other they provide a sophisticated understanding. We also take account of the dialogue among the three organisations. 9 Our multi-sited approach is complemented by insights from previous research on Swedish sex role activism. While we do not make direct comparisons between the Finnish and Swedish sex role movements, scholarship on the Swedish movement has encouraged us to look beyond the hegemonic narrative regarding sex role activism in Finland. 10 This article does not focus on the sex role debate that took place in the mainstream Finnish media. 11 Instead, we focus on internal discussions within the SNDL and Association 9, and on those organisations' contributions to the public debate, in order to analyse their understanding of sex roles. Using archival sources from Association 9 and the SNDL as well as the White Paper of the Committee for Women's Status, we ask how and to what extent radical sex role ideology was adopted by the SNDL. What were the similarities and differences among the aims and proposals presented by Association 9, the SNDL, and the committee? How were the ideas of Association 9 and the SNDL actualised in the White Paper? In answering these questions, we draw on the insights of media scholar Kaarina Nikunen into the public sphere as 'a constructed societal space in which citizens have the opportunity to discuss questions in which they share a common interest'. 12 According to this definition, the media plays a central role in maintaining the public sphere, but public discussions also take place in other arenas. 13 Additionally, our analysis is connected to feminist critiques of Jürgen Habermas's theory of the public sphere, which introduced the idea of counterpublics. For instance, political scientist Nancy Fraser has argued that alongside the dominant public, there also exist several counterpublics. 14 In late 1960s Finland, the foundations for the new gender equality policies were laid through parliamentary committee work; but as we will show, the sex role ideology was formulated through a public discussion comprising a dominant public and a people's democratic counterpublic, 15 the latter serving as an arena for internal discussion within the radical left (the SNDL included). 16 Entanglements between Association 9 and the SNDL Finland's geographical locationbetween the Soviet Union and liberal Swedenrepresents an important context for the development of gender equality and feminism in the country during the Cold War period. Although Finland's cultural radicalisation produced a number of 'single-issue movements', including Association 9, the political parties and official state apparatus remained central to the mental landscape of Finnish society. Unlike in many other countries, radicalisation in Finland channelled itself first and foremost through a politicisation that polarised society, giving the extreme end of communism increasing momentum from the early 1970s onwards. Nevertheless, for a brief period during the late 1960s, the culturally radical groups that represented the New Left contributed to societal discussions side by side with party political organisations, especially left-wing organisations. 17 The Finnish sex role debate, specifically, was initiated by articles by Margaretha Mickwitz and Ritva Turunen. These articles were published in the Finnish-Swedish newspaper Nya Pressen (Mickwitz) and the Finnish-language newspaper Uusi Suomi (Turunen) in autumn 1965. 18 Inspired by theories emanating from Sweden and America, they launched a lively discussion of the topic in the Finnish media. In November 1965, Mickwitz and Turunen joined Group 9 (Ryhmä 9), an informal group whose purpose was to set up an official association to promote radical sex role ideology in Finland. Established in February 1966, Association 9 was formed as a civic organisation with a relatively loose structure. 19 In the association's first year, members totalled around 250 in Helsinki; membership had risen to nearly 800 by 1970, when the decision was taken to wind up the association. 20 Association 9 aimed to transform society so that gender-based divisions would cease to exist in all the spheres where they were unnecessary. 21 One of the main aims of Association 9 was to attract publicity in order to gain a larger audience for its agenda, educate people about radical sex role ideology, and influence political parties and political decision-making. 22 To achieve this aim, various members of Association 9 actively participated in public discussions of sex roles, both in print media and on radio and television. Alongside its media appearances, the association promoted its ideas through seminars and demonstrations, as well as issuing statements and publishing research reports and other publications. 23 Thus, the question of sex roles was in the air in general, and as a result, 60-80 per cent of Finnish people followed the public debate about the association's goals and actions. 24 This public debate was matched by a political process in 1966, when the Finnish government appointed a specific organ, the Committee for Women's Status, to discuss and find solutions to improve women's position in society. The committee consisted of representatives from all the political parties, including the SNDL, and civic organisations such as Association 9; it published its White Paper in 1970. The White Paper was a result of negotiations between all the participating actors, and it encouraged active policies with regard to gender equality. 25 By 'sex role', Association 9 meant all expectations, norms, and values regarding a person as either a man or a woman. 26 Association 9 criticised the strict division of men's and women's roles into two separate spheres. They demanded that both women and men should play two rolesbreadwinner and parentwhich in turn also meant that both sexes should have equal rights, opportunities, and responsibilities at work, at home, in the family, and in sexuality. 27 In this respect, the concerns of Association 9's members resembled those of women on the British radical left during the late 1960s. The radical left intellectuals of the day, and later activists in the UK feminist movement such as Sheila Rowbotham, argued that there was a need not just for the new woman, but also for the new man. 28 For them, the women's liberation movement offered a channel for this. In contrast Association 9 combined grassroots activism with parliamentary methods, and provided a platform for women and men to collaborate.
The SNDL was a party political women's organisation, and large by comparison with Association 9. Established in 1944, it was a successor to the working women's organising of the late nineteenth century and unlike Association 9 the SNDL represented the Old Left. 29 It supported the Finnish People's Democratic League (Suomen Kansan Demokraattinen Liitto, SKDL), a coalition of left-wing parties established in 1944. 30 In the late 1960s, the SNDL had between 16,000 and 17,000 individual women members; if we also include its organisational members, the SNDL's activities reached approximately 35,000 Finnish women. 31 The majority of these women had communist sympathies, and this influenced the SNDL's activities, the central aim of which was to enhance the political power of the SKDL. 32 However, the SNDL also sought to reach women beyond its own political circle, which it did by publishing the women's magazine Uusi Nainen. In 1966 the organisation also launched an internal magazine, Pippuri, which aimed to offer guidance to SNDL members. 33 Since the late 1940s the SNDL had striven to improve women's status by focusing on issues such as equal pay and paid maternity leave. 34 However, by the mid-1960s, SNDL members had realised that their party's everyday politics did not promote equal treatment of the genders in practice, even though the Finnish radical left had embraced the socialist gender system, which in theory included gender equality in party politics. 35 At the same time, the growing debate on sex roles in the Finnish mainstream media prompted the organisation to problematise women's status with the help of the concept of sex roles. 36 As a result, the SNDL's general assembly agreed on the need to take a stance on the woman question at its eighth meeting in November 1965, which was supported by the SNDL's national commission composed of representatives of regional committees (from now on we refer to this organisational body as the commission). Consequently, a committee was set up at the beginning of 1966 to prepare a programme entitled For Women's Liberation (Naisen vapauttamiseksi), a name later changed to Woman, Man, Democracy (Nainen, mies, demokratia). The purpose of the programme was to map out women's status in the society and to present the SNDL's solutions to the prevailing problems. 37 During the spring of 1966, the discussion of sex roles appeared in various forums in the Finnish public sphere, and local chapters of the SNDL also made their own contributions. 38 For instance, a discussion event on women's roles was organised at the People's House in Lahti in March 1966. Based around Kansan Uutiset, Finland's leading radical left newspaper, the event attracted approximately 200 participants. 39 At the same time, the SNDL's committee for women's liberation held internal discussions of the sex role ideology; these discussions resulted in a draft programme, which was widely discussed at various local events and in people's democratic newspapers after its release on 8 March 1967. 40 A year later, a seminar concerning the programme was organised in connection with the general assembly of June 1968, leading to the programme's approval 41 and the publication of its material manifestation, i.e. a printed leaflet entitled Woman, Man, Democracy, in October 1968. According to a press release, the leaflet was based on feedback from over 1,000 local discussion events with a total of 35,000 participants. 42 Thus, the question of sex roles was widely problematised within the people's democratic counterpublic between 1966 and 1968. The discussion was initiated by the official organs of the SNDL, but from spring 1966 onwards the understanding of sex roles was also negotiated in gatherings and seminars throughout the country, and in media texts.
The two-year process towards the Woman, Man, Democracy programme coincided with the public debate promoted by Association 9. The informal Group 9 was established at the same time as the SNDL's general assembly of 1965. Furthermore, the main publications of both organisations -Association 9's pamphlet Harmful Laws of Men's World (Miesten mailman nurjat lait) and the SNDL's leaflet Women, Man, Democracywere released in autumn 1968. A key person connecting the Association 9-led sex role debate and the SNDL's process towards the Woman, Man, Democracy programme was Kati Peltola: a founding member of Association 9, Peltola was also a serving local politician with the SKDL, i.e. the political party behind the SNDL. 43 Association 9's core group also included Brita Polttila, a writer who had previously worked on Vapaa Sana, a newspaper owned by the SKDL. More formal ties existed between the organisations too. Association 9 seems to have invited members of the SNDL to join its constitutive meeting in early 1966. 44 The establishment of the association was also reported prominently in Kansan Uutiset. 45 Later that year, the SNDL's committee for women's liberation decided to invite Peltola to a meeting to describe the work done by Association 9. 46 The governmental Committee for Women's Status was another point of contact between the SNDL and Association 9: Irma Rosnell (SNDL), Inkeri Anttila (Association 9), and Jutta Zilliacus (Association 9) participated in its work, Anttila as a professor of criminology and Zilliacus as a journalist. The association's influence was particularly significant because the committee drew on the expertise of sociologist Klaus Mäkelä, journalist Ritva-Liisa Sumu, and architect Kirsti Nordin, all of whom were active members of Association 9 and made an impact on its working groups that focused on juridical questions, childrearing and housing. The committee's secretaries, Anneli Kuusi and Leila Räsänen, were also association members. 47 A similar connection between political women's organisations and extra-parliamentary groups is observed by Ulrika Thomsson, who has studied the public discussion of sexual abuse in 1970s Sweden. She argues that political women's organisations need external impetus for their campaigns on gender equality because it is easier for them to react to issues that are already on the public agenda. 48 In this case, however, the impetus also operated in the opposite direction: particularly after the official publication of the Woman, Man, Democracy programme in March 1967, the SNDL and Association 9 reciprocally shared their ideas. 49 For instance, Association 9 and some of its individual members were informed about the Woman, Man, Democracy programme, 50 and the association had a representative at the International Congress for Women organised by the SNDL in Helsinki in 1969. 51 Furthermore, in publications and statements issued by Association 9 during its final years, the problems of modern society were framed as problems of capitalist society, and the solutions were framed by Marxist argumentation. 52 Certainly, during the final years of the association's campaigning, members used presentational strategies that directly connected the central causes with left-wing political perspectives. Arguably, this was partly the result of the flow of influence between the SNDL and the grassroots organising of Association 9, which was more multidirectional than was the case in Sweden, where Group 222 focused on spreading information it had gathered from others' political programmes and academic research. 53 We might also argue that the active role taken by the SNDL in problematising sex roles widened interest in the SNDL's ideas among other organisations, especially Association 9, which in turn strengthened the connections between their respective discussions. This is also observed by Katainen, who concludes that Association 9 was influenced by the SNDL in its discussion of childcare issues. Instead of the 'mother's wage'an idea being debated in Finland at the timethe association began to support a strategy promoted by the SNDL, according to which child support would be paid to both stay-athome mothers and working mothers. 54 Striving for a modern or democratic society The radical sex role ideology promoted by Association 9 represented modern scientific thinking and was based on recent sociological studies demonstrating that people's behaviour differed from existing gender norms and expectations. For example, contrary to the traditional gender roles that prevailed in Finnish society, over 50 per cent of Finnish mothers with young children (under school age) were in paid work. 55 Turunen interpreted this finding in 1966: In the 1960s, Finland is facing the fact that the gender-based division of labour has changed […] but the role expectations have mostly remained the same. There is a cultural lag, a gap between attitudes and reality, which is harmful to society as a whole and particularly to the group that has faced the most rapid changewomen. 56 Rather than helping people to adjust to outdated norms and quasi-biological role expectations, Association 9 called for a transformation of the social roles of men and women. The goal was to create a modern society based on justice.
The main difference between the theorisation of sex roles and feminist ideology was that the former encompassed men's roles. 57 In particular, Association 9 consciously dissociated itself from women's organisations and 'the woman question'. This was marked in the mixed gender composition of sex role organisations in contrast to feminist organisations. In the case of Association 9, three of the nine founding members were men and during its active years 28 per cent of all the association's members and 38 per cent of board members were male. 58 The association not only included men at an organisational level, but also argued that a change in women's role required a change in men's role, as the sex roles were interrelated. Sociologist and member of the Association 9's research group, Risto Jaakkola explained this as follows in 1968: 'The sex role debate is not primarily about changing women's social status, it is about dividing tasks appropriately and fairly, regardless of gender. Achieving this goal will not only mean changes in women's status, but it will also create new possibilities of choice for men.' 59 The basic idea that both genders should be able to express themselves in all areas of life was presented in several texts written to explain the idea of sex roles and the aims of the Association 9. In 1968, Holger Rotkirch, the association's board member, formulated this as follows: The main goal is not to help women integrate into men's society and promote their possibilities to act in it, but to truly try to transform the structure of the whole society so that both men and women will have the possibility to fulfil themselves according to their skills and to combine a close family relationship with participation in paid work. 60 The influence of Association 9's ideological premises can also be observed in the documents produced by the SNDL committee for women's liberation. That is to say that the sex-role terminology was used in the organisation's internal discussions relating to the women's status in the society. However, there was also a conflict between them. Firstly, the concept of sex roles was not as self-evident a starting point for discussion within the SNDL as it was for Association 9: while some SNDL members rooted their opinions in a more traditional understanding of 'the woman question', others were familiar with the ongoing debate and promoted a sociological understanding of gender. 61 Nevertheless, the ongoing discussion of sex roles made it clear that the SNDL also needed to focus on this question in its activities, as the SNDL's general secretary Tyyne Tuominen pointed out in Kansan Uutiset in June 1966. 62 What was common to the various viewpoints within the SNDLsimilarly to Association 9was the understanding that it was the changing society that had put pressure on unravelling traditional gender roles. The SNDL's ideas were directly connected to socialist ideology, however: more balanced roles for both genders were needed in order to achieve a democratic society that was free from capitalism and its by-product, patriarchy. 63 In this respect, the SNDL's manner of problematising gender roles fits with Ellen DuBois's definition of left feminism as 'a perspective which fuses a recognition of the systematic oppression of women with an appreciation of other structures of power underlying […] society'. 64 In general, party political women's organisations are tied to the ideology of their main party, as Thomsson has argued. 65 However, the irrelevance of women's issues in the party political arena may also serve as an impetus for the more active striving for gender equality, as was the case with the SNDL. At the launch of the finalised Woman, Man, Democracy programme in 1968, Irma Torvi, the SNDL's second chairwoman, described the origins of the organisation's interest in the sex role discussion within these terms. She explained: We drifted into the so-called sex role discussion inspired not so much by foreign or domestic examples, but rather by the irritation caused by the continuous, seemingly insuperable obstacles we faced, which slowed down the work we had decided together to carry out. 66 Additionally, the internal discussion demonstrates that the SNDL had difficulties determining its stance towards Association 9. On one hand, the discussion within the SNDL's commission and committee for women's liberation embraced the ideas presented by members of the association and made reference to Swedish sex role theorists such as Eva Moberg, Joachim Israel, and Bror Rexed, from whom Association 9's main ideas also derived. 67 The clearest example of a shared interest with Association 9 is the committee for women's liberation decision in April 1966 to recommend that SNDL members should join local chapters of Association 9. 68 On the other hand, the SNDL did not want the connection to be too evident in public. For instance, in 1966 Aili Backlund, the head of the committee for women's liberation, noted: 'We must state that we are happy about the ongoing discussion of sex roles. However, we do not need to advertise Association 9, for example'. 69 Arguably, this contradiction resulted from the class struggle. For the SNDL, Association 9 represented the mainstream discussion of sex roles, which its members connected with upper-and middle-class womena connection often drawn by communist and socialist women in various countries. 70 For this reason, the planning of the Woman, Man, Democracy programme was a continuous balancing act between the right kind of socialist worldview and sociological thinking about gender roles, which was associated with bourgeois society. To some extent, people's opinions about gender role ideology differed by generation: even within the SNDL, younger women were more inclined to support new ideas and some were members of Association 9. 71 Similar generational differences in responses to feminism within socialist and communist women's organisations have also been found in other countries in the Global North, such as Sweden, the US, and Canada. 72 The SNDL's contradictory relationship with radical sex role ideology and Association 9 derived first and foremost from the political divisions within Finnish society. For the SNDL, women's minority status in society was a result of the capitalist economy, and the struggle for gender equality needed to take place in connection with the struggle for a new world order. The internal discussion was thus framed by a socialist viewpoint, even though references were also made to sociological theorisations. The combination of sociological ideas about gender roles with socialist ideology was clearly present, for example, in a speech given by journalist and SNDL member Kristiina Nordgren at the SNDL study day for commission and district secretaries in May 1966: Sex role is a purely sociological concept which means […] all those expectations, norms, and values which concern individuals as men or women […]. Marx too viewed people as the products of history and prevailing society, as societal and not biological beings.
[…] In class society, both men and women (as societal beings) fulfil certain sex roles […]. Thus, gender is first and foremost a societal problem. 73 This combination of socialist and sociological understandings of gender was also manifest in the rhetoric that included both genders. According to the main actors behind the Woman, Man, Democracy programme, the struggle for gender equality should not be seen as exclusively a women's question; rather, it was a task that the sexes needed to accomplish together. 74 After the launch of the first draft of the programme, Pippuri specifically instructed local members that it was necessary to include men in the discussion because it would 'broaden the scope of the cause'. It argued: When discussing it [the programme draft], we should not view this issue one-sidedly as only a women's question. It is also a matter of improving men's status.
[…] We should get men in particular to say what they think about the programme and the problems related to it. 75 As the quote indicates, men were not only comrades in the socialist revolution, but they were needed to make women's status in society more equal. However, the organisation also acknowledged the need to improve men's status in society. Thus, the arguments heard at the meetings of the SNDL commission and the committee for women's liberation closely resembled the ideas of Association 9. 76 Echoes of both strands of the sex role discussionthe sociological and the socialistcan be found in the Committee for Women's Status's White Paper. The paper did not refer directly to either strand, instead only mentioning the recent public discussion, which had shown that women's issues were connected to the wider issue of power in gender relations. Nevertheless, the White Paper made its case by taking a similar approach to that found in documents from both Association 9 and the SNDL. The pressures caused by a changing society were forcing a renegotiation of gender relations. Specifically, gendered attitudes had not kept pace with the changes unfolding in wider societyfor example, traditional understandings of gender had remained in place even though women had entered the labour market. 77 Thus, the White Paper can be seen as a result of the lively discussion of sex roles that had taken place in Finland in the late 1960s, even though its main focus was on women's social status. To some extent the committee and its White Paper also bridged grassroots activism and more traditional women's organising. Association 9 had publicly dissociated itself from the arena of women-specific feminism and traditional women's organisations, in which the SNDL continued to sit. 78 Nevertheless, many of the association's members had sympathies with the political left. 79 This eased the pathway for relations with left-wing women's organisations such as the SNDL, and like other cultural radicals of the 1960s, Association 9 turned towards the left during its final years. 80 Collaboration with the SNDL and members of other political women's organisations arguably served as a contact point in this process, supporting the leftist leanings of Association 9 members.

Reforming gender roles in practice?
Finnish society was a latecomer in the construction of a modern welfare state, which influenced the understanding of gender relations in the country. In the immediate post-war years, the population was characterised by agrarian way of life, which maintained traditional gender roles. However, the construction of the welfare state accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s when urbanisation of the country was accompanied with variety of social reforms. Many of these reforms, such as the acceptance of the ILO's principle of equal pay (1962), improved the status of women and the process was actively informed by the social sciences. 81 Likewise, the ideological premises behind the discussion of gender roles were influenced by Finnish and other Nordic social science scholars such as Erik Allardt and Pekka Kuusi. According to Allardt and Kuusi, the individual and the collective were intertwined, which meant that improving the lives of individual people would be beneficial to the collective, i.e. the state. 82 A similar understanding can be found in the solutions to the gender role problem presented by Association 9 and the SNDL. As a party political women's organisation, the SNDL pursued change through legislative and parliamentary work. Association 9 operated in a similar manner: it had a ninemember board that coordinated the activism of 18 working groups, each of which had been established to carry out specific tasks. The children's day care group, for example, focused on early childhood education. Additionally, both Association 9 and the SNDL promoted social reform by publishing pamphlets and research reports as well as making legislative suggestions. According to both organisations, it was through the political system that change would be achieved. 83 One way to do this was to participate in the work of the Committee for Women's Status.
Both Association 9 and the SNDL emphasised the need to reform children's education: they demanded that the school system free itself from traditional sex role thinking by offering the same curriculum to both girls and boys, by training all children to participate in public discussion and working life, by re-educating teachers, and by renouncing gender-based vocational guidance. 84 For the SNDL, the transition to a comprehensive school system, which was being developed in Finland at the time, was a way to improve the educational level of all citizens. 85 Association 9, on the other hand, argued that structural changes to the school system were not enough; a change in cultural expectations was needed. Otherwise, schoolchildren and their parents would continue to make educational choices on the basis of the traditional gender division. 86 Another central demand on the agendas of both the SNDL and Association 9 was communal day care with trained kindergarten teachers, which would help the parents of small children to combine paid work and family life. 87 In 1960s Finland, the length of maternity leave was a maximum of three months, making it difficult for women to combine childrearing with paid work. 88 Association 9 proposed that maternity leave should be extended from three to six months, and that fathers should stay at home for the last three of those six months. 89 Although the SNDL did not take a stance on paternity leave, it too proposed an extension of maternity leave to six months. In addition, the SNDL demanded that women should have the right to stay at home for a year after their child was born without losing their job. 90 Simultaneously, both organisations demanded the right to abortion and argued that every child should be wanted. 91 The need for better childcare services was closely connected to the question of women's paid work. For the SNDL, workplace democracy was a way to improve women's status in the labour market. Trade unions were given a central role in the fight for more democratic workplaces in which both men and women would be equal. 92 Association 9 had a broader vision: it demanded the abolition of all genderbased discrimination and segregation in the labour market. 93 For both organisations, one solution to the increasing need to support women's participation in paid work was the provision of collective housing. Following recent Nordic debates on the topic, they argued that families, especially mothers, should be able to reduce the burden of housework by using collective services. 94 Their suggestions included day care and ready-meal services, communal saunas, help with cleaning and repairing things at home, shared meeting spaces, and so forthi.e. services that would bring people together and diminish individuals' workloads at home. 95 Association 9 also demanded a new kind of urban space that would include different functions in the same area. This would help people to combine paid work with family life, and there would be no need for mothers to stay at home in isolation from other adults. 96 The above-described public and private aspects of the need to reform gender roles were closely intertwined with juridical questions. Association 9 and the SNDL demanded that all aspects of the law that caused gender-specific discrimination should be abolished. For instance, women should be allowed to keep their unmarried surnames after marriage, and men should be able to receive a widow's pension. Furthermore, they called for the separate taxation of spouses. Association 9's juridical group also demanded that both parents should have the same rights as guardians of their children, i.e. after divorce. 97 As this makes clear, the demands made by Association 9 went slightly further than those made by the SNDL. The Woman, Man, Democracy programme was framed by a socialist understanding of class struggle; consequently, structural changes were emphasised, even though the ideas were based on a recognition of the need to change cultural expectations regarding sex roles. The demands of both organisations were also influenced by the societal context of late 1960s Finland. Although the organisations acknowledged the need to renew men's roles too, most of the concrete demands of both Association 9 and the SNDL focused on measures that would improve women's status in society. Speaking in the seminar in which the finalised Woman, Man, Democracy programme was released in June 1968, Irma Torvi summarised the core idea behind the SNDL's thinking as follows: 'Woman, Man, Democracy is a programme for women but not against men. It is a programme against conservative thoughts and attitudes, against power relations'. 98 Some of the measures proposed by Association 9 and the SNDL, such as collective housing, remained purely theoretical. Others gained political momentum when the Abortion Act (1970) and Day Care Act (1973) were passed and separate taxation (1976) was enabled. The ideas presented by both organisations could also be seen in the Committee for Women's Status's White Paper. For instance, collective services for families were discussed at length, as was the need to lengthen maternity leave. The importance of paternity leave was also acknowledged as a way to improve women's status in labour market. 99 By conceptualising the ways in which the new ideas about gender roles could be actualised, Association 9 and the SNDL thus helped to envision a new society where both women and men could fulfil their potential, at work and in family life. Additionally, they paved the way for the 1970s discussions of gender by removing issues such as abortion from the agenda of Finnish feminists. During the 1970s, feminist ideology was further elaborated and advanced by the Feminist Union (Naisasialiitto Unioni) and radical feminists in Finland. 100

Conclusion
Previous scholars in Finland have analysed Association 9, the SNDL, and the Committee for Women's Status separately. In this article, we draw on a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which radical sex role ideology was implemented in the Finnish public discussion.
Lynn Abrams has argued that a cultural feedback loop helped to change the mental landscape of 1960s Britain. For British women, a new language of feelings suddenly seemed to be everywhere, allowing them to express their frustration with their roles as stay-at-home mothers. 101 Abrams's argument offers an important perspective for this article. Due to the cultural differences between Finland and the UK, there was no shift towards a language of feelings in Finland at this time, but nonetheless, we can identify a cultural feedback loop in relation to radical sex role ideology. Association 9 and the SNDL, along with the mass media and political apparatus, helped to embed new ideas about gender roles in Finland's mental landscape, paving the way towards the important gender equality milestones achieved during the 1970s. This would not have been possible if Association 9 had not appealed to the cultural radicals of the New Left, nor if the SNDL had not provided fertile ground for new ideas among the Old Left. The cultural feedback loop was completed by the work of the Committee for Women's Status, which adopted influences from the two organisations.
Both lines of the sex role discussionthe sociological and the socialistderived from the historical context of late 1960s Finland, and to some extent they were intertwined. Association 9 had sympathies with the radical left, but it relied on research-based knowledge and used sociological concepts as a cornerstone of its rhetoric, which was linked to the prestige accorded to social sciences in public discussions at the time. 102 In contrast, the SNDL acknowledged sociological concepts, but its main goal was to promote a more democratic society based on a socialist worldview, which in turn was related to the leftwing zeitgeist of the 1960s. 103 However, the concept of sex roles offered the SNDL a new way of thinking about the demands it had been making since its establishment to improve women's status in society. The concept encouraged the SNDL to 'push the boundaries of the radical imagination'. 104 Previous research has underestimated the SNDL's influence on the ways in which Finns thought about gender. One reason for this probably lies in the ideological dimension of the debate. Association 9 was more in tune with the spirit of the time, when scientific knowledge was valued and new social movements began to emphasise direct action instead of political discussion. Another explanation can be found in the contradictions between the dominant public and the people's democratic counterpublic. While to some extent the two discussions of sex roles were intertwined and had common audiences, the people's democratic counterpublici.e. people's democratic newspapers and magazines, as well as party political seminars and other eventscomprised the radical left's main channel of information regarding the new ideas about sex roles, as this article has shown. This discussion echoed the scientific premises of the debate within the dominant public, but it was adjusted to fit the political rhetoric of the radical left. The ways in which the discussion was promoted differed too. Unlike Association 9's leadership of the debate in the dominant public, the SNDL's main contribution to the debate (i.e. the Woman, Man, Democracy programme) was a result of internal discussions. It was a two-year process that unfolded in various local and national SNDL meetings, as well as in the internal magazine Pippuri alongside the wider people's democratic press. In reality, the final outcome of the programme, i.e. the leaflet Woman, Man, Democracy, was not widely deployed after its release, but the two-year process towards it made an important contribution by introducing the new ideas about sex roles to the radical left. Previous interpretations have excluded this contribution to the late 1960s sex role debate, and in doing so they have neglected a part of the discussion.
If we read SNDL sources alongside archival material from Association 9 as we have done, rather than previous scholarship which has treated the discussions separately, we find a continuum between the two organisations' ways of renegotiating sex roles. Arguably, the two publics offered adjacent forums for the negotiation of new understandings of gender roles, resulting in a gradual change in Finnish people's gender role attitudes and the development of a more equal society from the 1970s onwards. This article has emphasised the connections between non-parliamentary and party political actors, as well as our need to search for the history of feminism in places that continue to be neglected due to the resilient narrative of successive feminist waves. Furthermore, this article has deepened the understanding of the sex role discussion in Nordic countries by revealing that Association 9 and the SNDL proactively conducted research and used their results to support their cause. In this respect, the Finnish sex role discussion differed from that found in Sweden, where Group 222 focused on distributing the results of others. 105 At the same time, it is evident that goals connected to employment policy and social and regional equality (e.g. legislation for abortion, day care, and separate taxation) were easier to achieve in the 1960s and early 1970s. By contrast, reforms that included symbolically important issues, such as women's right to retain their surnames after marriage and a number of other matrimonial laws, were implemented in Finland as late as the 1980s. 106 Thus, the historical context informed the ways in which Association 9 and the SNDL strived for change, and how their demands could be incorporated into the White Paper of the Committee for Women's Status. Their interplay nevertheless affected the cultural feedback loop in Finnish society, creating potential for further change. We end this article by urging future research to be more sensitive to entanglements between parliamentary and non-parliamentary actors that make feminist claims.