The purpose of this article is to analyse an example of non-decision making in the Nordic tripartite policy process, namely the reform of the Finnish gender equality legislation. The concept of non-decision making can be used for analysing the mechanisms through which gender equality issues are marginalised and delegitimised in order to keep them off the political agenda. The suppression of women’s shared interests is central to the maintenance of a patriarchal society. By analysing non-decision making, it is possible to understand the dynamics and methods used by patriarchal systems in order to marginalise gender equality issues and maintain the patriarchal status quo (e.g. Marchbank, 1994, 2000).
Building on earlier gender equality legislation, the Finnish gender equality law has been recently reformed. The process began in 2012, and the reformed law was enacted in 2015. Currently, Finnish organisations are obliged to reform their gender equality plans and pay surveys to meet the requirements of the reformed law. This article tells the story of how the law for pay comparisons came into existence. It was negotiated in a tripartite working group consisting of representation from the Finnish governmental gender equality machinery and the seven central labour market organisations.
This article has the following specific aims: to analyse the role of employer and employee organisations in shaping Finnish equal pay policy, to provide an analysis of the strategies used by the organisations in order to prevent changes in policy, and to analyse the implications of the policy process for equal pay objectives.
The data consist of documentation from a total of 18 tripartite working group meetings, the minutes of the meetings and appendices. The research method used is qualitative content analysis (e.g. Schreier, 2014). The analysis focuses on the argumentation used by the participants of the working group. The analysis uses the idea of barriers in the policy process (e.g. Marchbank, 1994, 2000). The different phases in the policy process are: 1) objective interest, 2) public agenda, 3) political agenda, 4) decision, and, 5) implementation. In order to become a policy, the policy initiative has to go through all these phases and overcome barriers between the phases. Non-decision making can occur in all of these phases.
According to the analysis, four main topics of negotiation and conflict are identifiable: 1) shop stewards’ access to wage data, 2) comparing wages between collective agreements, 3) equal value comparisons and, 4) comparing by pay component. These central issues remained on the agenda throughout the policy process, and the methods of non-decision making were targeted towards these issues until a compromise was eventually reached and issue suppression successfully achieved.
With all four central topics of negotiation, the employer organisations were successful in limiting the scope of decision-making to issues that do not pose a major threat to their vested interests. The newly reformed gender equality legislation does not give specific advice on shop stewards’ access to wage data, and it does not mention comparing wages
between collective agreements. It does mention work of equal value but does not give any specific tools on conducting equal value comparisons. The scope of comparing wages is limited to comparing the same and similar jobs within pre-existing pay grades and other classification. Comparisons by pay component are included in the law but only if pay differences are identified when comparing total wages.
Marchbank (1994) lists methods of non-decision making. In this working group, methods such as delegitimising, issue suppression, branding with negative symbols and intimidation are used. In addition, there is bargaining: in order to meet some of their objectives the Ministry was willing to compromise and let Finnish organisations conduct gender equality planning less often in the future.
When looking at the reformed law about pay surveys, it is clear that many of the central features initially included on the working group’s agenda did not survive the tripartite policy process. This case also highlights the consequences of the tripartite policy process on policy initiatives. The participants have a vested interest that they aim to protect when participating in policy processes. The policy process also has implications for the effectiveness of such policies, which can be characterised as compromises.
Pay surveys are a policy mechanism targeted at preventing pay discrimination and to make, at least to some extent, the undervaluation of women’s work (Grimshaw and Rubery, 2007, Austen et al., 2013) visible at the organisational level. The efficiency of such policy mechanism is compromised by a variety of factors: evaluation-based pay systems that are used as a tool for pay comparisons are indeed not always based on assessing job demands and performance but can reflect a variety of issues such market factors and shared cultural understandings of appropriate wage levels for certain jobs or employee groups. Thus, using pre-existing pay grades is not a reliable comparison method. The institutional actors’ vested interests are reflected both within the existing pay systems which they have often negotiated as part of collective agreements and the policy mechanism itself, which the same actors negotiated. The employer organisations especially made sure that the policy developed would not shake the status quo and their vested interest – that is, the existing structure of wage formation in the Finnish labour market. The tripartite policy process, and the problems it entails, is very rarely openly discussed in Finnish society.