Affective institutional work and ordoliberal governance : Gender equality in the parliamentary debates on the Competitiveness Pact in Finland

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=swom20 NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research ISSN: 0803-8740 (Print) 1502-394X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/swom20 Affective Institutional Work and Ordoliberal Governance: Gender Equality in Parliamentary Debates on the Competitiveness Pact in Finland Miikaeli Kylä-Laaso & Paula Koskinen Sandberg To cite this article: Miikaeli Kylä-Laaso & Paula Koskinen Sandberg (2019): Affective Institutional Work and Ordoliberal Governance: Gender Equality in Parliamentary Debates on the Competitiveness Pact in Finland, NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2019.1697749 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2019.1697749 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 17 Dec 2019. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data ARTICLE Affective Institutional Work and Ordoliberal Governance: Gender Equality in Parliamentary Debates on the Competitiveness Pact in Finland Miikaeli Kylä-Laaso and Paula Koskinen Sandberg Gender Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland ABSTRACT The 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath have created opportunities for institutional actors to formulate and implement neoliberal reforms and policies. In this article, we analyse a recent ordoliberal policy measure of the Finnish government—namely, the Competitiveness Pact—and related legislative measures. Ordoliberalism, a variant of neoliberalism, entails a strong state which aims to protect the economy from interfering influences. The government’s main objective was to increase the competitiveness of the Finnish economy by lowering labour costs. However, the competitiveness measures caused a conflict between the government and labour market parties. As the measures mainly targeted the feminized public sector, they had clear gendered impacts that became central to the struggle between the government and trade unions. We utilize critical discourse analysis as a methodology to study affective institutional work and ordoliberal governance in parliamentary discussions on these measures. Our results show that gender equality was marginalized and considered a threatening issue for the ordoliberal regime. The Pact was also the government’s attempt to make institutional changes to the norms and relations of the corporatist system, as the government assumed the leading role by setting demands for the labour market parties to fulfil. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 1 April 2019 Accepted 15 November 2019 KEYWORDS Competition state; welfare state; gender equality; ordoliberalism; affect Introduction Responses to the economic crisis of 2008 have seen intensifying neoliberal policies in combination with a more authoritarian approach to governance, demanding and even forcing sacrifices from the people. Since the crisis, the Finnish economy has struggled with stagnation and growing public debt, with no clear-cut solutions. Between 2008 and 2015, the Finnish government introduced various austerity measures, which did not greatly impact this progress (Harjuniemi & Ampuja, 2019). By 2015, when parliamentary elections were looming in Finland, the political discourse was filled with a sense of impending doom. Lack of competitiveness resulting from high wages and growing public debt were defined as key problems, to which the right-wing parties proposed the solution of even more severe austerity. A key measure for this was the Competitiveness Pact, which forms the case study of this paper. The crisis and its aftermath also enabled institutional actors to formulate and implement neoliberal and ordoliberal reforms and policies. The Competitiveness Pact was an attempt to decrease labour costs and increase the competitiveness of the Finnish economy. It was initiated in 2015 by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s centre-right-populist government (e.g. Elomäki, 2019) and negotiated with the labour market parties. Along with the government’s austerity policies, the Pact had drastic gender CONTACT Miikaeli Kylä-Laaso miikaeli.kyla-laaso@tuni.fi NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2019.1697749 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. implications for the labour market. The Pact was also an attempt by the government to implement institutional changes to the norms and relations of the corporatist system. The government took a leading role, setting demands for the labour market parties to fulfil with labour cost reductions as the main goal. The government threatened to make further cuts of up to €10 billion and implement an alternative competitiveness package—the so-called obligatory laws—which would bypass the labour market parties’agreements. Thus, the government had a great deal of weight behind its demands. In this power struggle, gendered impacts of the competitiveness measures became a central issue of debate. Our main interest in this article lies in analysing how the government tried to change a central institution—the corporatist system—and how it reacted to resistance and criticism of the gender inequality that its policies would cause. The austerity and competitiveness measures can be understood in the context of ordoliberal ideology, which entails the state’s active agency in promoting a competitive national economy by protecting the markets from interfering influences (Bonefeld, 2012). In the case of the Pact, however, strong politicization came in the form of a critical focus on gender equality. The gendered impacts of laws and the Pact were raised as a central issue by trade unions, the opposition and scholars (Elomäki, Kantola, Koivunen, & Ylöstalo, 2016; Harjuniemi & Ampuja, 2019; Jokinen, 2017). For our analysis, we develop the concept of affective institutional work. Institutional work represents action directed towards “creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions”(Lawrence, Suddaby, & Leca, 2011). Our focus is on the affective meaning-making and affective economies (Ahmed, 2004; Wetherell, 2013) in which this institutional work is embedded: the circulation and use of emotions and their attachment to different signs and objects, which played a central role in the debates over the obligatory laws and the Pact. As the government endeavoured to secure the legitimacy of its policies and take extraordinary actions in the labour markets, it also had to manage the affective economies of gendered issues, such as the tension between the female-dominated public sector and male-dominated private sector, in the context of competitiveness. The concept of affective institutional work enables us to analyse how affects were used to maintain and disrupt institutions. We have chosen to analyse the Finnish parliamentary discussions held during the years 2015–2017, covering the formation of the Pact. We employ critical discourse analysis of the affective institutional work and discourses employed by the government to defend its competitivenesspromoting measures and the obligatory laws against gender equality–related criticism in particular. Our research questions are as follows: (1) What kind of affective institutional work did the government do when defending and seeking to legitimize its competitiveness measures and their gendered consequences? (2) How was the government’saffective and discursive meaning-making embedded in the changing corporatist system and ordoliberal governance? Our research contributes to previous scholarship by presenting a sociological analysis of the state as an active agent in the present-day Finnish ordoliberal competition state (e.g. Kantola & Kananen, 2013) as well as the status of gender equality in the state’s reforms. We seek to contribute to the study of ordoliberal governance in the context of gender equality and corporatism by analysing the discourse and affects used to obtain consent for ordoliberal policies—that is, the affective institutional work. We also contribute to feminist studies of the economy by highlighting how economic ideas of governance are embedded in affective meaning-making and how affects, in turn, influence institutional change and economic governance. Ordoliberal competition state, corporatism and the gendered labour market Neoliberalism and its variant, ordoliberalism, are viewed as dominant ideologies in contemporary Finnish society. These ideologies have challenged the more traditional social-democratic ideas often linked to Nordic societies and welfare states. The general tendencies and features of neoliberalism include deregulation, privatization and the state’s withdrawal from areas of social protection 2M. KYLÄ-LAASO AND P. KOSKINEN SANDBERG (Harvey, 2005; Jessop, 2002). While the absence of state intervention in the market is central to neoliberalism, in ordoliberalism, the state is an active agent enhancing market efficiency by protecting the markets from political strife and the undue influence of the people (e.g. Miettinen, 2017). Therefore, the context of this article is the ordoliberal competition state. Finland has experienced two severe economic crises in recent decades: one in the 1990s (the national banking crisis) and the other in 2008 (the global financial crisis). In the aftermath of these crises, the global neoliberal project gained legitimacy, thus facilitating the paradigm shift from the welfare state to the competition state (Kantola & Kananen, 2013; see also Elomäki et al., 2016). The Sipilä government in particular moved the state towards ordoliberal governance (Adkins, Kortesoja, Mannevuo, & Ylöstalo, 2019; Kantola & Kananen, 2013). As showcased in the formulation of the obligatory laws of the Competitiveness Pact, the state tried to bypass the labour market parties and restrict their freedom to negotiate—or force them to agree to the Pact—by implementing legislation. To fully understand the Competitiveness Pact’s impact on gender equality, it is important to closely examine the gendered structures and institutions of the Finnish labour market—namely, the ordoliberal competition state and corporatism. Finland shares many features with other Nordic countries, which are typically acknowledged as relatively gender-equal societies (e.g. World Economic Forum, 2018). This characteristic is commonly attributed to the Nordic women-friendly welfare state model (e.g. Borchorst & Siim, 2002; Hernes, 1987). However, the dismantling of the social-democratic welfare state and adoption of the ordoliberal competition state has had gendered consequences. Public sector services, which are at the core of the welfare state and mainly employ women, have been subjected to strict budgetary control. Emphasis on the competitiveness of the export industry has strengthened, and the public sector has been portrayed as a burden, thus justifying the cutting of expenses (Kantola & Kananen, 2013). This kind of rhetoric has been particularly pronounced since nurses managed to negotiate relatively high wage increases in 2007, with most industries then following this example. The result was a significant rise in Finland’s labour costs, with unfortunate timing, just before the 2008 financial crisis (e.g. Saari, Kantola, & Koskinen Sandberg, in press). The nurses’wage increases in particular and the 2007 collective bargaining round in general have been blamed for the loss of national competitiveness. All Nordic countries have high levels of gender segregation in the labour market, with Finland having the highest level (Grönlund, Halldén, & Magnusson, 2016). Women in Finland tend to work in the public sector, mainly the local government sector, while men typically work in the private sector, specifically in the construction and export industries. The local government sector employs approximately 420,000 people, which is a large number in a nation of only 5 million people. In the local government sector, women comprise 80% of the labour force. Employees in feminized occupations, such as nurses, early education personnel and teachers, all work for the local government for relatively low pay (e.g. Koskinen Sandberg, Törnroos, & Kohvakka, 2018). The Competitiveness Pact hit these people especially hard because it cut from their already modest salaries. Finland ranks as strongly corporatist according to various economic and political criteria, such as high union density, interest groups’active involvement in policy formation and centralized wage bargaining (e.g. Bergqvist, 2004; Kauppinen, 2005; Vesa, Kantola, & Binderkrantz, 2018). Corporatism is central to how the Finnish labour market and political decision-making are organized. The labour market parties work in active collaboration with the Finnish governments and exercise significant decision-making power. This powerful position was the main reason why Sipilä’s government aimed to change or at least dismantle the power of corporatism in Finland. Typically, the government would have to gain acceptance from the labour market parties to implement a labour market reform or policy, which would then be negotiated with the labour market parties. For a policy measure to come into force, reaching consensus in the tripartite framework is crucial. While this was also the case with the Competitiveness Pact, here, the NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 3 government took on an exceptional leadership role and tried to dictate the formulation and implementation of this labour market policy (see also Adkins et al., 2019). The Competitiveness Pact and the obligatory laws The Competitiveness Pact, initially called the Social Pact, was largely framed by the 2008 economic crisis, which has had a lengthy aftermath. Research shows an unwillingness in Finnish media to provide alternative viewpoints to the narrative offered by hegemonic institutions, although there were conflicting views on the state of Finnish labour’s competitiveness (Harjuniemi & Ampuja, 2019; Kaitila, 2019). While debate on austerity measures peaked in 2015, before the parliamentary elections (e.g. Adkins et al., 2019), Finland had already adopted austerity measures some years earlier, and the previous government had raised awareness of the crisis. The Ministry of Finance set the terms of this debate and all major political parties accepted, rather uncritically, the Ministry’s view that austerity was necessary to survive the crisis (Elomäki, 2019). According to Juha Sipilä of the Centre Party, who became the Prime Minister, something needed to be done to “save the country”, and Finland would face economic difficulties similar to those of Greece unless the reforms were implemented (see also Adkins et al., 2019). Austerity measures and national competitiveness were central to the strategic government programme, Finland—Land of Solutions (Prime Minister’s Office, 2015). The newly formed government consisted of the conservative Centre Party, the right-wing National Coalition Party and the right-wing populist Finns Party, which later split into two parties, with only roughly half of their representatives remaining in the government. As a solution to economic challenges, the government came up with the Competitiveness Pact. The Pact was to be negotiated between the state and the labour market parties, who were meant to determine the practical implementation of the policy measures. The Pact’s central aim was to increase the competitiveness of the Finnish economy (Prime Minister’sOffice, 2015). This aim would be achieved by either lowering labour costs by 5% or increasing work hours by 100 hours a year (without pay increases)—demands that were difficult for trade unions to accept. When the negotiations did not produce results, the government began planning an alternative competitiveness package—also mentioned in the government programme—to enforce its goals. The package would have prevented the labour market parties from negotiating some terms normally agreed upon in collective agreements, which resulted in the adoption of the term “obligatory laws”. To decrease labour costs and other expenses for employers, cuts would be made in several areas. Increasing competitiveness was presented as a solution to the rising public debt and increasing state expenditure for the sake of private business competitiveness was considered acceptable. The government decided to reduce the social security contributions of employers by 1.72% and transfer these costs to the state, changing some public holidays into unpaid ones and reducing payments for employees on sick leave. Originally, the package also included cutting extra pay for overtime and working on Sundays, but as these measures would have affected the female-dominated sectors harshly, they faced heavy criticism and were eventually replaced with the aforementioned holiday pay cuts. This received less criticism despite its similar targeting of the public sector. Although the public sector and the state were key in paying for this “productivity leap”, according to the government, this was all done to “provide a sustainable basis for the funding of the welfare society” (Finnish Government, 2015). The government also proposed measures which it framed as favouring employers and gender equality, such as giving €2,500 in compensation to employers whose employees took parental leave, which can be seen as a mostly symbolic act for the sake of gender equality. These competitiveness measures were discussed often in the parliament during the Sipilä government’s term. Ultimately, the labour market parties reached a consensus on the Pact in spring 2016. The Pact would involve cuts to certain pay components, such as cutting the holiday pay of public sector employees for three years (approximately half a month’s extra salary that is paid annually), shifting 4M. KYLÄ-LAASO AND P. KOSKINEN SANDBERG social insurance contributions from employers to employees by 1.20%, shifting social security payments from employers to the state by at least 0.58% and adding 24 extra unpaid annual working hours (Competitiveness Pact, 2016). The Competitiveness Pact and the state’s role in enforcing it were also connected to a discourse of the waning role of the corporatist system and centralized collective bargaining, which were portrayed as historical remnants. According to Brown (2015) and Adkins et al. (2019), this was an inversion of the traditional social contract: the government demanded sacrifices from Finnish citizens in order to protect the Finnish economy and competitiveness instead of protecting the citizens’rights. Methodology and data: affective institutional work, discourse analysis and parliamentary discussions In this article, our methodological approach is situated within critical discourse analysis and the research on affects, grounded in the works of, for example, Ahmed (2004) and Wetherell (2013). We combine these approaches with research on institutional work to analyse how affects are used and is present in discursive meaning-making and how this, in turn, appears as part of the institutional work of government in changing the corporatist system in Finland. The starting point for analysing affects is asking what affects do in interaction and how these interactions organize the social order (Ahmed, 2004). Utilizing the concept of affective economy, Ahmed discusses how affects gain stickiness towards various objects, which come to be considered as sources of these affects. In her use, affect refers to the circulation of emotions and their attachment to objects and signs, which then shapes and organizes action and people. According to Wetherell (2013), affects, emotions and discourse are, in many ways, entangled as emotions are negotiated, evaluated and performed as part of affective/discursive meaning-making (on emotions in discursive institutional work, see also Moisander, Hirsto, & Fahy, 2016). Therefore, we utilize critical discourse analysis as our methodology, where the relationship between knowledge and power is central—how knowledge is produced and with it both possibilities and limitations, in terms of action and subjectivity (Kantola & Lombardo, 2017). Institutions can be defined as historical accumulations of practices (e.g. Scott, 2013). Institutions set the conditions for future action. Feminist scholars have noted that institutions are gendered and they reflect, reinforce and structure unequal power relations in society (e.g. Chappell & Waylen, 2013). For the purposes of our study, we coin the term affective institutional work, which merges concepts around institutional work (e.g. Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006; Lawrence et al., 2011) and affect theory (e.g. Ahmed, 2004; Wetherell, 2013). Institutional work represents action directed towards “creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions”(e.g. Lawrence et al., 2011). The literature on institutional work has produced concepts such as disruptive institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006), defensive institutional work (Maguire & Hardy, 2009) and temporal institutional work (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016). We contribute to this literature by bringing in elements of affect theory. The concept of affective institutional work allows for analysing how institutional work is conducted via mobilizing affects to create, maintain or disrupt institutions. Our research data consist of plenary sessions of the Finnish parliament in 2015–2017, totalling 27 different documents and approximately 400–450 pages. The discussions used are taken from various stages of the process leading to the Competitiveness Pact. The data are available online and were gathered from the Finnish parliament’s website (Finnish Government, n.d.), where the material is stored. All plenary sessions are recorded and published online and referenced in the analysis as PTK (abbreviation for minutes of the meeting). These data were chosen because our interests are in the government’saffective institutional work and ways of legitimizing its exceptional actions and gendered policies. Although the views of the labour market parties are missing from the data, they provide ample opportunities for analysing the government’s discourse, which is central to our research questions. We selected the quotations according to their relevance to the subject: although law or the Pact have been discussed often, the discussions where they were central and NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 5 provoked dialogue were the most fruitful ones. We also aim to illuminate the issues that became central in these discussions. We begin our analysis by focusing on the obligatory laws and then move to the agreement over the Pact. We pay attention to the affective institutional work done by the government in the context of ordoliberalism. What kinds of affects relating to the obligatory laws and the Competitiveness Pact are produced, ignored or elaborated, and what are their implications for gender equality? Legitimizing ordoliberalism via affective institutional work The planning of the obligatory laws began in autumn 2015, when Prime Minister Sipilä ended negotiations on the Competitiveness Pact with the labour market parties for the second time due to thetradeunions’disagreement with the government’s goals. Both times, the negotiations were rather short, and the tight time limits set by the government made reaching any agreement challenging (Hirvola, 2017). These cuts would have had the most severe effects on the female-dominated occupations in the public and service sectors. Facing resistance and criticism from trade unions, the opposition and several academics (Elomäki et al., 2016;Hirvola,2017), the government needed to create legitimacy for both its exceptional actions in the corporatist system and the gendered effects of its policies. After the laws were announced, Prime Minister Sipilä took the unusual decision to deliver a public speech on national television targeting all Finnish citizens and workers in the Finnish labour market (YLE News, 2015). In his speech, he pleaded with the labour market parties to a find a solution, while expressing his understanding that part of the planned competitiveness package would adversely affect certain groups of employees, but that these cuts in wages and benefits were necessary for the common good. When asked in the parliament about the gendered impacts of the laws and proposed cuts to extra wages for overtime and working on Sundays, the government representatives mostly ignored the issue and focused on the “big picture”of the economy. We will begin our analysis with talk about this “big picture”and the affective institutional work of the government regarding the gendered impacts of the laws. According to Ahmed (2004), affects are oriented towards different objects through encounters. The following quotations reveal the centrality of reorienting affects from one object to another to the government’saffective institutional work. Opposition MP Aino-Kaisa Pekonen (Left Alliance) had the following to say about the laws: This is an unforeseen attack on the freedom of contract. The government’s cuts are directed towards low-wage women, care sector and store workers . . . How does disciplining low-wage women increase the competitiveness of Finnish export industries? (PTK 31/2015) In Pekonen’s comment, there is a clear focus on the intersection of class and gender. This is used to evoke feelings of injustice, as the well-being of low-wage women in various sectors is largely perceived to be sacrificed for the Finnish export industries. Low-wage women, and nurses in particular, were a strong rhetorical device and figures used often to argue against the government’s policies (Elomäki et al., 2016). This criticism is tied to the logic of the obligatory laws: not only are low-wage women targeted unfairly, the government’s policy is also based on illegitimate goals and means, as they would limit the labour market parties’freedom of contract. Affects relating to injustice regarding gender equality and class are at the core here. However, Prime Minister Sipilä’s response does not address these issues: This entire package saves around 1.4 billion euros from the public sector. Part of this will be used to balance the economy of the public sector and part will be used to decrease the social security payments of the private sector, which increases the competitiveness of the private sector—this is the part that those with a job can do for the unemployed. (PTK 31/2015) Although Pekonen connects the laws to gender and the functioning of the corporatist system, Sipilä mostly ignores both of these in favour of discussing the economy in general. This represents 6M. KYLÄ-LAASO AND P. KOSKINEN SANDBERG a common strategy in the government’s responses, which allowed it to focus on its ordoliberal agenda. The first part of Sipilä’s answer is rather technical, focused on describing the government’s logic, while the second part focuses on the general category of employees without a gender perspective. Despite the degree of technicality, a great deal of affective institutional work is done here. Sipilä replaces the category of low-wage women by speaking about the public sector, which is a considerably more abstract category with a different range of affects attached to it. The comment relies on a discourse of a bloated or unhealthy public sector, which creates public debt and, in turn, creating problems for competitiveness. The need for balance clearly indicates that the public sector already has more than enough resources. Interest in better wages in the public sector is also delegitimised because it would threaten increased employment. Despite being heavily underpaid, the low-wage women are implicitly positioned as at least better offthan the unemployed. Discussing the demands of neoliberal policy, Brown (2015) indicates that rhetoric about the public sector tends to be particularly accusatory and, following this, greater sacrifices are asked of it. The affective economy (Ahmed, 2004) of the public sector is somewhat different from that of a low-wage woman. As the public debt had been rising ever since the economic crisis began, blame was directed at the public sector, despite the numerous layoffs during the crisis (Jonker-Hoffrén, 2019). Sipilä’s response consists mostly of not answering the key issues raised in the criticism, diverting the related affects elsewhere. Sipilä still had the following to say on the effects of laws regarding the distribution of wealth: “It is repulsive for me to think in the way that there is someone in this that benefits and someone who loses”(PTK 39/2015). For Sipilä, considering the conflicts, benefits and interests vested in the obligatory laws was “repulsive”. The use of this word implies a strong moral and affective stance; the consequences of the laws were ignored for the sake of evaluating the government’s moral integrity. This, however, also positions other actors under the microscope. This discourse suggests that labour market parties that are unwilling to accept the competitiveness measures or other parties that are critical of the laws are acting unethically for the sake of group interests. Disruptive institutional work can happen by undermining the moral foundations of the institution (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006), which is central to the discourse shown above, as the trade unions and other actors showing resistance are implicitly regarded as questionable in their criticism. Labour market parties were to blame for gendered impacts of the competitiveness package, according to the government. Facing questions about whether the government actually had a right to make the obligatory laws, Sipilä said the following: “Of course we would have wanted to agree about it together—then we would have been able to better take into account different economic sectors. But no will was found for this”(PTK 31/2015). This indirectly justifies the government’s gendered policies while accusing the trade unions of preventing the government from designing better policies. Thus, the government is claiming to have no alternatives to its position and positioning itself simultaneously as a victim of unwilling trade unions and a saviour doing what needs to be done regardless. This latter discourse is apparent in the following words of Sampo Terho of the populist Finns Party: “None of the means the government has proposed for increasing competitiveness are ideological. The only ideology the government has is saving Finland”(PTK 42/2015)—requiring the participation of all Finns. The discourse of competitiveness is rather nationalistic, where the sacrifices required from the people are also constructed as being for the greater good. This constitutes a form of affective institutional work similar to that above by questioning the moral foundations of other actors. Yet it also provides a hopeful future. It is possible to save Finland, but Finland now needs everyone to do their part. This discourse relies strongly on a nationalistic affective economy and, therefore, love and fear—the implication being that if nothing is done to “save Finland”, there will be severe and incalculable consequences. Indeed, the “way of Greece”is central to this discourse, and it entails fear of a failed economy and loss of national autonomy to the NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 7 EU. This is used to generate emotional and moral uncertainty about the future (e.g. Brown, 2015) and, largely, also positions everyone as equally responsible for the future. The quotations above are deeply embedded in ordoliberal ideology. Most of the affective institutional work is directed towards establishing the legitimacy of the government’s actions and delegitimising the corporatist system or other actors, portraying them as representing illegitimate group interests. The government, meanwhile, is looking after the economy as a whole and, thus, after Finland itself. Affective economies (Ahmed, 2004) used rely on the stickiness of fears, doubts and suspicions regarding the public sector or the corporatist system: the discourse of an excessively large public sector causing debt or the corporatist system being outdated and unable to do anything but work for group interests. Responses to the policies’gendered effects are then reoriented and recategorized, resulting in very different affective economies being evoked from those relating to lowwage women. According to Ahmed (2004), emotion and affects might be valued differently depending on what they are orientated towards. At the core is the illegitimacy of the affects and emotions of low-wage women because they are not directed towards what is constructed as the common interest of “saving Finland”but, instead, are even portrayed and evaluated as harmful. Government as a proponent of gender equality: values and affects Despite these attempts to shift the conversation away from gender, gender equality became increasingly focal issues in the debates about the obligatory laws, perhaps partly because the affects and interests of low-wage women and other targets of the cuts were not recognized. The government showed resilience in defending the obligatory laws and austerity policies, but admitted to issues relating to gender equality in the proposed cuts to extra pay for overtime and working on Sundays. The government eventually replaced this proposal with cuts to holiday pay, although these were also gendered to some degree, disproportionately targeting the public sector. With these changes, the government started to position itself as a proponent of gender equality, in contrast to the labour market parties. The €2,500 compensation for employers whose employees took parental leave also became central to the government’s discourse. As affective institutional work, the government’s values became central to managing and creating its legitimacy, constructing an image of a righteous actor. The eventually withdrawn cuts to overtime and Sunday pay had faced substantial criticism from the opposition, trade unions and researchers, but the government had remained unresponsive (e.g. Elomäki et al., 2016; Hirvola, 2017). What ultimately changed the government’s position was a televised interview with two midwives, who discussed how the cuts impacted their personal lives. Sipilä then claimed that their arguments had convinced him of the negative consequences of the planned cuts. Sipilä went on to portray the replacement cuts in holiday pay as an achievement of the government, saying that the government had “truly searched for alternative options. We turned every stone until we found a better way”(PTK 42/2015). This discourse emphasized that it would not be the government’s fault if policies caused gender inequalities. Instead, Petri Honkonen of the Centre Party referred to the history of corporatism, where labour market parties had been unable to make progress regarding gender equality: From the perspective of equality, I’m grateful in particular for this equality leap, where the expenses of parental leave are compensated by €2,500, levelling the inequalities faced by young women in the labour markets— despite that the male-dominated labour market parties have tried to prevent this for years. (PTK 42/2015) Thus, the values and goals of the labour market parties were directly questioned, casting suspicion on their interest in gender equality. Instead, there was an “equality leap”made by the government, associated with the “competitiveness leap”that was also the government’s goal. Our data reveal that this compensation became a central part of the government’s discourse, showcasing its capacity for considering gender equality. The affective economy of disappointment related to the failures of the corporatist system was utilized to delegitimise the labour market parties’actions. This worked to 8M. KYLÄ-LAASO AND P. KOSKINEN SANDBERG