ABSTRACT
When Carol Gilligan launched the concept "relational self" in her famous work, "In a Different Voice" (1982) she maintained that feminine ethics is much more likely to relate to the needs of others than was the case with the Cartesian/Kantian autonomous subject and morality construction. In the Nordic countries, where modernisation, individuation and sexual differentiation were tardy phenomena, such strongly dichotomous thinking seems less appropriate. What differs in the North, is that the locus of identification is much more extensive than in the traditional model emphasising intimate relations in the family. In Finland, especially, women's identification with the nation state has been significant.
