By Päivi Arvonen

Somali-born Saido Mohamed learned from her father that daughters are equal to sons. For the past ten years, she has worked in Finland for the rights of foreign-born women and girls.

The Somali civil war broke up Saido Mohamed’s family. The family members fled the fighting in Mogadishu. Mohamed planned to join her brothers in Switzerland, but she ended up in Hämeenlinna, where her sister was living. It was 1991, and she was 16 at the time.

“I knew nothing about Finland. I had thought that my future could be in Switzerland, England or the United States,” Mohamed says.
She now lives in Helsinki, where she has worked as an expert for the Finnish League for Human Rights for more than ten years.

Language course and night school

After her arrival in Hämeenlinna, Mohamed enrolled in a Finnish language course. She finished general upper secondary school (lukio) in evening classes. After school, she completed nursing studies at the Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences.

“My studies and adjustment to Finland went well. I spoke English, which made it easier to carry out daily affairs. When I learned Finnish, I soon made friends with Finns,” Mohamed recalls.

After she qualified as a nurse in 2001, Mohamed was employed at the Laakso Hospital in Helsinki. She took a leave of absence from the hospital in 2004 to work for the Finnish League for Human Rights. She joined the league’s Whole Woman project, which focuses on the prevention of female genital mutilation.

She had served the project on voluntary basis before.

“I try to advance women’s equal rights and an attitude change inside the Somali community. I grew up with an outlook of equal rights, as my father always emphasized that girls are equal to boys. I’m a feminist, but women can’t change the world by themselves; to do that, we need men, too.”

A life that suits her

Mohamed has never felt a conflict between her two cultural identities.
“My feeling varies from day to day. On some days I feel more Finnish, on other days I feel more Somali,” she explains.

She stresses that she is proud both of her roots and of her Finnish identity. She became a Finnish citizen in 1998.

“Finland allows people to live the lives that they choose and on their own terms. I understood a long time ago that the civil war has made it impossible for us to return to the life that we had.”

Mohamed says that she well understands the problems of Somali-born women with children in Finland.

“It’s difficult for stay-at-home mothers to become employed. They rarely have the safety nets provided by the family and friends, and understandably the mothers of small children have little strength for studies.”

Despite their cultural differences, Mohamed finds many similarities between Finnish and Somali women.

“Somali women are very strong, and so are Finnish women. When you combine Finnish and Somali qualities, the result is a very tough person,” Mohamed laughs.

Criticism for the media

Mohamed has been sad and sometimes upset to watch the attitudes of Finns toward immigrants and asylum seekers.

“The media play a major role and they bear responsibilities as regards racism. The media distort the reality and worsen conflicts when they only report on negative aspects.”

Mohamed points out that there are a great many foreign-born taxpayers in Finland who feel like outsiders in the current atmosphere in the country.

“You can’t change things by attacking others. All productive interaction relies on respect and open discussion.”

Translated by Johanna Lemola

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