In an interview with Yle on Tuesday, International Women’s Day, the director of the Helsinki Integration Center, called on the authorities in Finland to help women with an immigrant background enter the labor market more easily and efficiently.
"Not only where there is a shortage of workers, but also what a woman’s dreams are," Marisel Soto Godoy said and added that the links between integration processes and working life need to be strengthened.
"Integration measures need to be smarter and more employment-oriented. Integration plans could be linked to jobs," he added.
According to the trade union STTK, about 40 per cent of women with an immigrant background living in Finland have a university degree, but only half of them are involved in working life.
Immigrant women traditionally work in female-dominated sectors, Soto Godoy pointed out, as they are specifically targeted at the social and health sectors.
However, there is a severe shortage of staff in some sectors of the Finnish labor market, and Soto Godoy believes that women with an immigrant background are an untapped resource that can fill these gaps.
"We have experts – women! Immigrant women are, on average, more educated than native Finnish men. In other words, we have experts, they just have to make use of their expertise," he said.
A report published by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Labor in 2020 revealed that Finland has not been as successful as its Nordic neighbors in getting immigrant women into employment.
Source: The Nordic Page