ABSTRACT
National ethnic unity and social inclusiveness were essential features of Finnish political ideology until the 1990s. At the time when Finnish nation state building and citizenship of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in general were projected in terms of homogeneous ethnicity and a blurring of boundaries between the state and civil society,1 the emancipation of women was encouraged as a part of the nation-building process.2 A new ideology of socially grounded citizenship was typical of the Nordic welfare states, and became a mainstay of Finnish political ideology in the 1960s. A major reorientation of Finnish politics occurred then, while Finland was progressing from a traditional agrarian society with limited social welfare state institutions into a late-modern economy and welfare state. Social policy was intended to support economic growth.3 A sense of community and social cohesion was seen as part of the ideology of the comprehensive type of welfare state as developed by Marshall. State action was to be aimed at removing class difference in a normative process that would promote a sense of community.4
