Adopting Public Relations-Like Strategies to Promote Labour Feminism in Finland, 1965–1975

Abstract

When public relations as a field professionalized in Finland in the 1960s, it had knock-on effects beyond the corporate world. As an example of this, I analyse various public relations-like strategies adopted by a party political women's organization, the Finnish Women's Democratic League. I show that as a radical left organization, the Finnish Women's Democratic League began to value media visibility in the mid-1960s, but it also continued to use more traditional communication forms, such as leaflets and workplace visits, to spread its ideological message. The changes of emphasis between various forms of communication were affected by the politicization of Finnish society, which caused tensions between the bourgeois dominant public and the ‘people's democratic’ counterpublic. My analysis is based on a close reading of minutes of Finnish Women's Democratic League meetings, press releases and other archival material, as well as Pippuri, the organization's internal magazine, and Uusi Nainen, a commercial women's magazine published by the organization .