March 19th is a national flag day celebrating equality and the trailblazing, stereotype-breaking work of writer and journalist Minna Canth.
Born on 19 March 1844, Canth is considered one of the most influential playwrights and realist prosaists in the history of the Finnish language. She was also the first Finnish-language female journalist.
Canth rose to fame in the late 1800s as a writer, intellectual and devout women's rights advocate. Canth tackled difficult issues such as poverty, class, unhappy marriages and infanticide. The play The Worker's Wife from 1885 is considered one of her most iconic pieces of work.
Finland has taken massive leaps forward in terms of gender equality since Canth's time. According to statistics, Finland is now one of the best places in the world to be a woman.
Finnish women were the first in the world to be given full rights to vote and run for Parliament in 1906. The country has been named the best place to be a mother in 2013 and 2014, only to be bumped to second place by Norway in 2015.
On International Women's Day, the Economist ranked Finland the fourth best place to be a working woman in its glass-ceiling index. This means women in Finland are more likely than men to have a university degree, and have better representation in company boards and politics than in other OECD countries.
There's still much work to be done, however. In 2014, Finland was ranked the second most violent country in the EU for women; 47 percent of women in Finland have experienced physical or sexual violence at some time since the age of 15. Just this week party office leaders of the National Coalition Party were accused of humiliating and chauvinistic behaviour in the workplace.
So treat yourself today, and roll up your sleeves for more work towards equality tomorrow.