Essi Lindstedt

By contrast in Finland: the Development Minister disproportionally cut the Trade Union Solidarity Center’s funding yesterday afternoon and it is front page news today. Finland is not perfect but we still trust each other enough to argue about things.

I spend years telling myself my fear of packing my cat is irrational and you pack a fricking lizard. Honestly, I leave this site for 2 weeks and this is what I come back to. Is the gecko ok?

Not tried that kind of porridge, was it good?

oh my goodness Lewis.

What we still get wrong about women’s role in global economics From the Enlightenment to today’s ‘tradwives’, three books look at the tension between production and reproduction

‘When Adam Smith wrote “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own interest,” he omitted any discussion of the unpaid work of his mother (& later his sister) that went into cooking his dinner.’ on.ft.com/4olyOut

Essi outside Qatar National Convention Centre where the Second World Summit for Sustainable Development will take place.

I’m in Doha for the World Summit on Sustainable Development. If you are too, see you in that building? Media release with our key messages from @fingo.fi here (in Finnish 🇫🇮). Basically, (1) equality and human rights in social policy and (2) investment. #WSSD2025 #WSSD2 fingo.fi/ajankohtaist...

Here’s another one. ”Make it a scuptural quiff but more dead behind the eyes.“

I am fixated on the gloves on the little girl. Like she might be hiding the blood on her hands from someone she murdered on the way to church. The whole thing is clearly nightmarish.

This is my central concern: that low birth rates, and the ensuing population panic, is just a cover to convince people that it's reasonable to support pronatalism, when really it's only nominally about raising birth rates and really about (re)creating a gender/race-ethnic/religious/etc hierarchy.

US dept of Labor Facebook ad featuring a Ladybird book style image of a 1940s style white family in a church.

Facebook keeps recommending me pages from the US Dept of Labor, and I have to admit, I am grimly fascinated.

Stare at oven clock and seek patience or skill to reset it?

The most regular people who work in the office are the CEO (works mostly through people) the 3 interns (keen to learn) and me (new, sociable). The knowledge workers stay home and make output. But I wonder how someone likes me, whose motivation comes from supporting the whole team to rise, fits in.

“Woke liberati arty farty,” is such an extraordinary thing in a sentence about politics, I can’t get over it. Like she’s running out of battery and will blow a few raspberries then power down.

These were the candy flavors of my childhood: ammonium chloride, menthol, tar and anise. Being a Finnish child meant having to choose between tar and anise. It was grim af. Somebody slapped you if you asked for pomegranate flavor.

If the goal is stable and productive societies, we need investment in social security, health coverage and decent work.

We will re-state the case for social development and equality in an era of geopolitics.

It was a joy to speak with Clarisse Sih about the upcoming world #SocialSummit -#WSSD2.

Time to get out and make some of your own noise! (Or just tune into silence depending on preference).

Noise cancelling or noise providing? I flip between both.

This is absolutely vicious.

@mikkonen.bsky.social - this article is packed with things we like and it’s funny!

She is just trying to figure out if you want food, pets, or to be let out.

I could not love this article by @stephenkb.bsky.social more. 💯 to the key message of “stop trying to dick around with fertility and work with the world as it is”.
And I LOVE this section⬇️.
FYI Kenya is on track to publish shadow national accounts that include care. Ihttps://on.ft.com/4hvwZIT

Every now and then something small reminds me of how long it is since I left Britain. (Sits in my retina-searing Finnish apartment which is also an anteroom for my special circle in Hell). I’m not offended, just interested in the cultural gap it highlights.

Good God. Is there nobody left in the Tory Party who can tell this bunch to get a grip?

when it’s seen as an addiction it makes more sense.

I’m sure he’s not ignorant of it, I read it more as a question of balance. I read it as
a complaint that there is not enough research funding full stop, which I sympathise with. Where I disagree with William is that I tend to think the more public education, the better.

Public lecture on climate models at Heureka Museum, Vantaa.

I think my confusion must be a Finnish v British thing - in Finland, public education is a core mission of museums. (Declaration of interest, I go to such events! Pic of audience listening to climate researcher through lit up headphones).

I’m not sure I understand your point.

Call 3: Non state actors in social development have taken a battering and we are still here; COVID, austerity and aid cuts not withstanding. We have solutions but the VIP lounge approach to global policy shuts us out. If there is a shared table, we'll put solutions on it. See you there.

Call 2: The WSSD political declaration to be signed at Doha is very quiet about crises. So from now on, the delivery phase f needs more recognition of the roles that different actors play in social development in crises. Social development in crises needs international humanitarian law to be upheld.

Call 1: Partners in SRHR and gender equality are looking to the Nordic countries to show leadership as others around the world step back or stir up a gender backlash. Nordics, step up. We should partner with leaders on new gender equality policy such as the Care Economy Policy pioneered in Kenya.