Flags are flying across Finland today to celebrate the life and work of Miina Sillanpää, a trailblazer in politics, social mobility and rights.
Sillanpää was born into a peasant family during the famine of the 1860s and by age 12 she was already working in a cotton factory in Forssa. Later she went to work in a nail factory during an era when child labour was the norm.
At age 18 she moved to Porvoo and changed her name from Vilhelmiina Riktig, her birth name, to the more typically Finnish-sounding Miina Sillanpää. After just three years in Porvoo she was already the head of the Servants’ Association, a position she held for the next 50 years while she campaigned for social justice.
In 1907 Sillanpää was elected to parliament in the first cohort of female MPs anywhere in the world, and was a Member of Parliament for 38 years in total throughout her working life. In 1926 she became a Minister for Social Affairs in the government of Prime Minister Väinö Tanner - and was Finland’s first female minister.
Miina Sillanpää also dedicated herself as a social campaigner for the rights of workers and women in Finland through journalism, writing for and editing several magazines.
She died in Helsinki in 1952, and October 1st was made a flag day on the 150th anniversary of her birthday in 2016.
