Empowerment through Networking

Since to date there have been hardly any efforts to improve the status of sexual and gender minorities in Finland, networking constitutes an important aspect in the project. Individual agents – such as SETA and its active members, and a few trade union workers – have been promoting the cause, but no networking has taken place nationally or across professional and occupational boundaries.

In order to encourage networking, we will support group action among sexual and gender minorities with regard to occupational and working life issues. We will also locate individuals active in promoting the status of sexual and gender minorities and pool them together for the purposes of information exchange. By making use of experiences gained by our transnational Equal Partners, we will seek to activate the Finnish labour market organisations in the relevant issues.

During the project, we will co-operate with the Finnish association of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans workers in social and health care, Steam. Lesbian and gay church employees also have their own activist group, called Arcus. We will also encourage joint action in other professional and occupational groups, with special emphasis on supporting the already existing activities amongst lesbian and gay teachers.

Furthermore, we will create a network between representatives of labour market organisations, researchers, NGO activists, authorities and politicians interested in promoting equal treatment of sexual and gender minorities in working life. We will survey the views of labour market organisations, authorities and other agents on sexual and gender minorities with regard to working life issues, and locate individuals interested in working for a more equal work environment.

Networking will take place on the level of sexual and gender minorities and transgress national boundaries. Through co-operation, we will endeavour to contribute to the already existing equality work within working life, and also try to introduce the perspective of sexual and gender minorities in various other relevant activities. One possibility will be to co-operate with a SETA project "Solmuista silmuiksi" (From problems to solutions), financed by the Raha-automaattiyhdistys (Finland's Slot Machine Association). The idea of the project is to create local employee networks and improve the quality of service for sexual and gender minority customers.