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Statement on the Government's budget proposal to Parliament for 2023 (HE 154/2022 vp.)

The Ombudsman for Equality was heard by the Employment and Equality Committee of Parliament on the government's budget proposal for 2023. According to his remit, the Ombudsman assessed the matter from the perspective of gender equality. 

Efficient law enforcement requires adequate resources

The Act on Equality between Women and Men (Equality Act) is comprehensive in scope. Only relationships between family members or other relationships in private life and activities associated with religious practices are excluded from the scope of the Act. Communications and requests for information to the Ombudsman for Equality and suspected cases of discrimination referred to the Ombudsman for processing accordingly concern a broad spectrum of issues, even though suspicions of discrimination in working life do have a pronounced role in the Ombudsman's work.

The Equality Act has been amended on several occasions since 2005, and these amendments have extended the remit of the Ombudsman for Equality. Among other things, the amendments of 2005 and 2015 clarified and expanded the obligations concerning gender equality planning. All educational institutions are now included in the gender equality planning obligation. Employers' obligations concerning gender equality planning have also been clarified. Gender minorities have been added to the scope of the Act, and sanctions have been provided for discrimination related to the availability and provision of goods and services. The amendments to the Equality Act have created a clear gap between the duties and resources of the Ombudsman for Equality with the result that, for example, the Ombudsman only has very limited opportunities for supervising the gender equality plans of workplaces or educational institutions. The Ombudsman for Equality has also described this insufficiency of resources in statements issued to several parliamentary committees.

Parliament has also recognised the Ombudsman for Equality's need for additional resources. Among other things, the Employment and Equality Committee remarked in its statement on the budget for 2018 that the Ombudsman for Equality's resources have not been increased regardless of multiple legislative amendments. The Committee last drew attention to the Ombudsman for Equality's resources in report TyVM 7/2022 vp., discussing the Ombudsman for Equality's report to Parliament (K 1/2022 vp.).

The majority of cases processed by the Ombudsman for Equality are customer enquiries. In 2021, the Ombudsman for Equality was contacted 989 times by telephone or email. The Ombudsman processed 623 cases in writing. Of these cases, 36% concerned prohibitions of discrimination as referred to in the Equality Act. Slightly over 40% of the discrimination cases concerned discrimination in working life. These were most often related to suspected discrimination on the basis of pregnancy or parenthood, discrimination in recruitment or pay discrimination. 

The Office of the Ombudsman for Equality has had ten employees since 2005. The Ministry of Justice has allocated EUR 60,000 per person-year to the Ombudsman for Equality until 1 April 2022 and EUR 80,000 per year since then. However, even the addition of a single person-year is not sufficient to rectify the Ombudsman's protracted and acute lack of personnel. 

The Ombudsman for Equality's resources and communications made to the Ombudsman can usefully be compared to, for example, the communications made and resources allocated to the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Divisions of the Regional State Administrative Agencies tasked with enforcing compliance with the Non-Discrimination Act (1325/2014). The government proposal for the partial amendment of the Non-Discrimination Act (HE 148/2022 vp.) states, for example, that 570 communications related to work discrimination were made to the OSH Divisions in 2021. Approximately 210 enforcement requests related to discrimination were made to the OSH Divisions in 2021. The Non-Discrimination Act was enforced with around 729 inspections initiated by authorities and around 134 inspections initiated by citizens. 

In 2020, the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman received 1,103 communications involving discrimination, 170 of which concerned working life. Both the OSH Divisions and Non-Discrimination Ombudsman have considerably greater human resources available for enforcing the Non-Discrimination Act. Regardless of this, studies have shown that concealed discrimination still exists. 

The Ombudsman made suggestions for improving the legal protection of discrimination victims In the Ombudsman for Equality's report to Parliament in 2022 (K 1/2022 vp.). In the Ombudsman for Equality's view, implementing these suggestions and increasing human resources would enable more efficient intervention in discrimination and promotion of gender equality in Finland.

The Ombudsman for Equality proposed an increase of EUR 140,000 to the Ombudsman's appropriation in the 2023 budget, which the Ombudsman could use for creating an additional senior inspector position, for example.

Gender-aware budgeting 

Gender-aware budgeting is an internationally appreciated strategy for promoting gender equality. It has also been discussed in Finland in recent years.

For example, the government's assessment and research publication 'Gender equality in the government budget' assessed the gender impact of tax and benefit reforms and gave recommendations for the development of gender-aware budgeting and the gender impact of budgets in Finland. In the statement issued by the Ombudsman for Equality to the Employment and Equality Committee on 21 October 2019 (TAS 309/2019), the Ombudsman referred to these recommendations for improving gender-aware budgeting drawn up in the project.

In the Ombudsman for Equality's view, the gender perspective is necessary in budgeting, since the budget and other decisions related to public finances can have different effects on different genders and can thus either promote or decrease gender equality. Gender-aware budgeting can be used to allocate public spending and income in an equality-promoting manner. 

An order issued by the Ministry of Finance on 30 April 2020 states that the justifications for the main titles in the draft budget shall include summarised analyses of activities with significant gender effects. The social impact targets for gender equality in the administrative branch and the administrative branch's expenses that could impact the realisation of gender equality shall be taken into account in these analyses. 

The justifications for the main titles in the 2023 budget accordingly include measures and objectives related to gender equality. These measures are not very commensurable, however, and their connection to the actual promotion of gender equality remains ambiguous in places. On the other hand, some measures related to the promotion of gender equality, such as the overall reform of sex offence legislation, are linked to the equality objectives of multiple administrative branches. In such cases, the planned and, in themselves, important objectives are discussed under several main titles and/or approprations for individual agencies. This hinders building an overall picture of objectives and appropriations allocated to projects. From the perspective of promoting equality, it could be clearer if measures and projects concerning several administrative branches would include references to other main titles discussing the same issue. 

The Ombudsman for Equality also proposes that more detailed instructions should be drawn up for the administrative branches on gender-aware budgeting, as has been done for gender impact assessments in legislative projects. The Ombudsman for Equality believes that this would contribute to the further promotion of gender equality.

19.10.2022