Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin isn’t interested in being asked about her age.
On Tuesday, she sat down for an interview with famed CNN and Washington Post journalist Fareed Zakaria at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the issue of gender equality, green energy investment and Putin’s war in Ukraine were raised.
Towards the latter half of the thirty minute conversation, Zakaria turned to the issue of Marin’s age and her gender, prefacing his question by saying: “I know that you don’t like to talk about your role as a very young woman in this very important job.”
Immediately, Marin cut him off with a laugh, saying: “And we don’t have to. You know, we don’t have to go there.”
Her comment garnered scattered applause in the audience. Zakaria reattempted his question adding, “there is a public fascination with it”
“Do you think that you have done things you furthered a women’s agenda or certain issues that you understood perhaps better than than others might?” he asked.
“Most of my time has gone with the major crisis that we have faced,” Marin clapped back.
“And this would have been the same situation, whether there would have been a male prime minister in Finland or not.”
“So no. My gender or my age hasn’t affected that much about the agenda that we all have to face during these years.”
But Marin did go on to elaborate on the importance of gender equality.
“For Finland, gender equality has always been very important,” she said. “Global but also internally, because we are a small nation — a nation of 5.5 million people. We couldn’t cope if we wouldn’t use all of the resources of all of our people”.
In 2019, Marin became the world’s youngest serving government leader when she was sworn in as prime minister of Finland, aged 34.
Zakaria, one of America’s most celebrated and respected journalists, has also been criticised by a Forbes contributor this week for calling female government leaders at Davos by their first names while addressing the male leaders by their official titles.
“Zakaria kept calling the women by their first names and the men by their titles,” Joan Michelson wrote. “He clearly knew what he was doing, even at one point trying to make an excuse for it, by saying there were two deputy ministers on the panel and he needed to use her first name.”
“Unacceptable. Disrespectful. He could have called her Deputy Prime Minister Freeland. Zakaria of all people should know better, because he has a long tenure in foreign affairs, including having International Politics and Economics, Harvard University and as Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine.”
This year’s forum, themed “Cooperation in a Fragmented World”, focuses on issues raised in the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Risks Report, which revealed that the cost-of-living crisis is the biggest risk facing the world over the next two years — with people of colour, people with disabilities and women experiencing these risks at greater levels.