In a recent Iltalehti piece a Finnish woman named Saija says that fellow conscripts and corporals repeatedly bullied and harassed her while she was completing voluntary military service. The harassment reportedly consisted primarily of degrading and inappropriate language rather than physical violence. During one particularly distressing incident at a field camp, she was surrounded by male servicemen and was allegedly reassured that they would “stop soon.” Saija now describes her military service as traumatic.

“The whole army experience upsets me and makes me anxious because national defence had been my dream, and I had always said that I would become a corporal. Nowadays, I start crying just thinking about my time there.” (…) Saija says that she first experienced disturbing and intimidating behaviour from other conscripts during her initial weeks of training. This included, for example, being stared at. As her service continued, she also experienced belittlement. One conscript repeatedly insulted Saija and questioned her competence. Whenever they were practising something they were expected to master by the end of the day, the conscript would say that Saija, at least, would never learn it.

Saija says that during evening feedback sessions, the corporals mocked her whenever she asked questions they considered stupid. Once, while cutting the hair of other members of her platoon, Saija was subjected to obscene comments directed at her. “Someone in the corner of the barracks room commented that they were getting turned on by watching me cut hair. I became anxious and just stayed silent,”

(…) Saija says that the corporals performed some kind of traditional ritual after lights-out. They woke the recruits by jumping outside the barracks-room windows with flashlights. At the time, Saija was still changing her clothes and was topless.

“They could see directly into the barracks room, and at least one of the corporals saw [her breasts] without a top on,” Saija says.

Her complaints to higher authorities were effectively discouraged by corporals, who told her to tolerate the harassment because “men are simply like that” and would soon stop. According to the article, this persistent approach quickly took out her resolve to report the continuing harassment. In one incident she recounted:

“One evening, the conscripts joked that the resin spraying from the firewood was a man’s semen and that it would fly onto my face. I was the only woman there,” she says. (…) “At NCO school, another conscript asked me what kind of thongs I wore,” Saija says. She was excluded from assignments and was often the last person chosen as a partner. Saija says that she missed a large proportion of the field exercises because she feared that the distressing experiences would be repeated and that she would be discriminated against.

The Finnish Defence Forces acknowledged that inappropriate conduct during conscript service remains a problem. Despite all the propaganda in the European media, Finland has struggled to offer women who volunteer for military service an environment free of sexual and gender-based harassment. Our recent report delved into this conscription aspect in quite some detail.

Read the entire piece in Iltalehti