Meet Finland’s Newly Elected 34-Year-Old Leader

Sanna Marin is set to become the world's youngest prime minister, leading a coalition entirely headed by women. This is what you need to know about Finland's 34-year-old new leader.

Pioneering gender equality in politics


She’s the world’s youngest serving prime minister. She’s leading a coalition government headed by women. She’s Finland’s new leader. This is Sanna Marin. Marin was born in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, and was raised by her mother and her mother’s female partner in a rented apartment. She was the first member of her family to go to university. At age 27, she became head of the city council of her industrial hometown Tampere.


In 2015, she became an MP. Three years later, she gave birth to her daughter Emma. She’s the third female prime minister of Finland and was previously the country’s transport minister. She won the confidence of parliament with 99 votes in favor and 70 against. At 34 she replaced Antti Rinne, who resigned last week after the Centre Party, one of the members of governing center-left coalition, said it had lost confidence in him over his handling of a postal strike. The new cabinet takes over in the middle of labor unrest and a wave of strikes which have halted production at some of Finland’s largest companies for three days.


As prime minister, she leads a center-left coalition of five parties all headed by women. Including Marin, four out of five female party leaders are under 35 such as Katri Kulmuni, Li Andersson and Maria Ohisalo. Twelve ministers in the new cabinet are women and just seven are men. The head of the Centre Party, Katri Kulmuni (32) becomes finance minister, Green Party leader Maria Ohisalo (34) continues as interior minister and the Left Alliance’s chairwoman Li Andersson (32) remains education minister. The Swedish People’s Party’s Anna-Maja Henriksson (55) remains justice minister, the only coalition leader to finish school before the 21st century.


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