Thomas

/ Gender, Race, Sexual identity, In public

Finland is praised as the happiest country, and while it has given me good opportunities, I’ve never felt a true sense of belonging. This isn’t about race—I have white skin—yet I’ve noticed a lack of openness toward immigrants. Many Finns carry a quiet superiority, a passive-aggressive attitude that says, I am better than you.

One night, while waiting for a bus near a nightclub, every Finnish man who passed made rude comments to me in Finnish. Then, a drunk man got so close that cameras couldn’t capture him. Thinking he wanted to say something normal, I smiled. Instead, he whispered:

“You piece of worthless human, go back to your land. Don’t even think about hitting on a Finnish woman. They are not yours.”

Then, he punched me in the stomach—deliberately, knowing what he was doing. That night I went to the police man who was 5 meters from
This incident he didn’t even recognize or pay attention to me. I am sure if I was Finnish and that guy was immigrant he would have deported and ended up jail.

Another matter is that during the day when I randomly pass over teenagers they keep telling bad Finnish slang to me and laugh. At that time I was thinking ok this is teenage hood but it clearly reveals what they parents are saying to them about immigrants

Finland is calm safe with high quality of education but during my time I could never feel home or sense of community and belonging.

Anonymous

/ Gender, Race, At work, Immigrant, At school/uni, Government agency

I work in Finland as a doctor since 2007. I got my right to specialize in Obstetrics & Gynecology from Helsinki University on March 2009. Imagine till now I still did not specialize…while all my Finnish colleagues, even the ones started after me became specialists and some of them became even “ylilääkäri”. I got the Finnish citizenship on 2008 and I do speak Finnish. May be I’m stupid, but is it fair to force me to leave my family and my kids in Finland and go to UK in order to finish my specialization to the end?! I can not even justify what happened to myself, there is no explanation other than DISCRIMINATION. What is shocking, is the fact that it happened in Helsinki University, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology….where people claim to be educated, professional and civilized as well.

Anonymous

/ Gender, In public, At school/uni, Near home

There was a foreign male student who came for exchange to Aalto University. Some day we were chilling with a big group of people on a beach. He tried to multiple times touch my legs pretending he wanted to cover me with a blanket from a cold (I didn’t want him to do that). Asking him to stop didn’t help.

With time I learned that other women in that group of students and friends were scared of him for the same reasons. There was a time when a drunk group of girls wanted to go to the beach after some party, that guy heard it and made some juicy comment about how he will “follow them, stay, and watch”. Two of more sober girls of that friend group had to persuade the girls to cancel the beach plan because it felt very unsafe to go there at night after his comment. He was also referring to one of the university female tutors like “big boobs” and there were many other disgusting situations like that.

The worst part was that male Aalto students heard all of that, but no one ever did anything to anyhow help us or shut him up. They went on inviting him to the parties. They tried to downplay his words and actions by “he is just joking”. I tried to tell one of those men, who was kind of my friend, how my “don’t touch me” didn’t stop that creepy student from touching me, to what my “friend” replied: “Well, with your accent it sounds so sexy, no wonder he didn’t stop”.

That’s how it went on till the end of the exchange period. Women were feeling unsafe, were telling each other not to go alone somewhere where that guy may be, and were watching their drunk female friends, while the male students were enjoying his company, smoking weed, and playing volley with him. Aalto University men, we don’t need your startups, we need your solidarity and active fight with harassment.

Anonymous

/ Gender, At work, Age

I (a woman) started working on the same position with another colleague (a man) on the same day. We went together for the onboarding session and had the same starting day. We also had similar work experience (I would even say I was a bit more senior than him in terms of the number of work years, but not too much necessarily + I had 3 years of experience in another, yet relevant field).

From the day one, that man has been talking to me like I don’t know anything and he knows everything. He was ignoring what I was saying, grabbing work tools straight out of my hands while I was working with them, because he felt like “he knew better how to use them and I needed guidance and immediate demonstration from him”. He presumed I don’t know anything about the work I was doing and couldn’t believe I have same years of experience as him.

When I sent some customer service emails responding to customer complaints (I had 3 years of experience in customer communications back then), he would run to the laptop and check that “I didn’t write anything wrong” or ask me “to consult with him before writing”. He wasn’t a manager.

At some point he started to control my actions even during remote work, even unrelated to work. For example, once I bought something urgent for the office with my own money and needed the company to pay me back. It was not a problem, I knew whom to contact. However, when he learned the company “owes me money”, he sent me a dm: “Hi! Please, you must send the receipt to X!”

Interrogating him wasn’t helping — he would pretend he doesn’t understand what I am talking about. When I shared my stories with male colleagues, they were shocked — he was unpleasant with them as well, but not to that extent.

He got fired and I was promoted to a manager position.

Anonymous

/ Gender, At work, Immigrant, Age, Language

I, a 25 year old girl, was hired by Etteplan as an embedded software engineer. It is a consulting company. Knowledge of Finnish language was not required for this position. I was assigned to a project where there were only mid-age Finnish men. At our first daily meeting they hardly spoke English, and since I was someone who did not yet know the project and could not contribute to the discussion, they switched to Finnish at some point. At the next daily meeting they started speaking Finnish immediately. After that I complained to my team lead and he replied something like, “They are not used to speaking English.” At that point I checked the job description again to make sure that Finnish was not required. It wasn’t. I started looking for a new job less than a week after being employed there. I found a decent option after only two months and was more than happy to quit my probationary period in one day.