Politics & Power Quote by Harri Holkeri

Holkeri’s line wears the calm confidence of a country that wants equality to read as boring policy, not aspirational slogan. “In Finland we have equal political rights” lands like a status update: settled, legislated, presumed. That matter-of-fact posture is the rhetoric. It quietly turns gender equality from a moral plea into civic infrastructure - something you measure by institutions, not vibes.

The sharper move is the second sentence: “We do not regard ourselves according to sex.” On its face, it’s a universalist claim: citizens first, gender second. Underneath, it’s also a strategic narrowing of the battlefield. If you can frame politics as a space where sex simply shouldn’t matter, you avoid confronting the messier question of whether sex still does matter through pay gaps, caregiving burdens, or representation beyond the ballot box. The sentence performs an ideal - neutrality - and invites the listener to accept that the ideal is already reality.

Context matters. Finland was an early pioneer: women gained full political rights in 1906, decades before much of Europe. By Holkeri’s era, that fact functioned as national branding: the Nordic model as modern, rational, quietly ahead of history. So the quote doubles as soft power. It’s less a domestic rallying cry than a way of telling the outside world: our democracy is mature enough that gender isn’t a political problem.

It works because it flatters the audience into identification. “We” isn’t just Finland; it’s the club of enlightened states. The seduction is that equality becomes a self-image you can inhabit - and stop interrogating.