Image: Henry Lämsä /Yle

Four of the nine political parties with MPs in the Finnish Parliament say they support law changes that would allow legal recognition of non-binary gender, according to a survey conducted by the Joensuu-based newspaper Karjalainen.



Enacting a change like this would require that Finland's Act on population data systems and Population Register Office certification services be amended.

People identifying as gender fluid or genderqueer do not feel exclusively male or female, and may therefore move between the gender binary or have a fluctuating gender identity.

The newspaper poll found that the leaders of the parliamentary groups representing the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the Greens, the Left Alliance and the Swedish People's Party of Finland (SPP) all supported a third gender law change without reservations.

The Centre Party parliamentary chair Antti Kaikkonen answered that his party supports changing gender legislation wording to recognise intersex children who are born with several variations in sex characteristics. Finns Party parliamentary group chair Leena Meri said her party also supports this policy.

The parliamentary group leaders of the centre-right National Coalition, Blue Reform and the Christian Democrat parties did not support legal recognition of a third gender in Finland.

Legally recognising a third gender in Finland would mean that people's gender in official personal data registers and on IDs could be marked as "other", in addition to "male" or "female".

Karjalainen reports that the Finnish Foreign Ministry is considering changing its system for personal identity codes to remove the indicator that now indicates the individual's gender. Under the current system, if the last of the four-number series that follow the date of birth is an odd number, the person is a male, if it is an even number, the person is a female.