What the controversy over Finnish Prime Minister's dancing videos reveals about women leaders

Videos posted on social media last week showed Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin singing and dancing at a private party with friends. But she is a young woman in politics, so next came furor.

Critics pounced, with opposition members of Parliament calling her behavior irresponsible and unbecoming of a prime minister. To quiet media speculation about substances used at the party, Marin took a drug test, which was negative. Women around the world who've ever had fun at a party made noise, too, posting videos on social media of themselves dancing exuberantly under the hashtag #solidaritywithsanna.

Marin called the demands for a drug test "unjust"; said she was spending time with friends during a weekend with no planned government meetings; and didn't do anything illegal.

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Marin is Finland's youngest prime minister and the leader of the country's center-left Social Democratic Party. She was elected in 2019, guiding the country through a pandemic and, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland's historic move to join NATO. But experts say her political accomplishments cannot diminish the double standards Marin faces as a 36-year-old female head of state.

"This was a woman public leader, who on her own time, in the privacy of a friend's home – and she would, by the way, be entitled to do this at a club – was engaging in normal human behavior, within all moral, ethical and legal bounds," says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics. "The fact that she is being taken to task in this way is indicative of the narrowness of boundaries for women."

Kristin Anderson, a professor of psychology at the University of Houston-Downtown and author of "Modern Misogyny: Anti-feminism in a Post-feminist Era," says Marin does not fit the stereotype of a leader, which people associate with older white men. Qualities that may afford Marin some social power as an ordinary citizen – her youth, her conventional attractiveness – actually become strikes against her when they are associated with leadership, power and ambition.

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According to UN Women, women are underrepresented in leadership positions worldwide. As of September, there were 26 women serving as heads of state or government. At this rate, gender equality in these positions won't be reached for another 130 years.

"People were swift to jump on these pictures and videos because they already believed she didn't quite belong in the position she is in," Anderson says.

Women in leadership positions face double standards

Anderson says leadership is an area where there are obvious gendered expectations for behavior and success. Since historically men were society's leaders, it takes more cognitive work, she says, to view a woman as one.

Anderson says that today, people's idea of a successful leader is more likely to be associated with characteristics men are thought to have than characteristics women are thought to have. This causes people to afford men more credit as leaders.

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"We are quick to find fault with ambitious, successful, authoritative – not authoritarian – women," she says. "We are slow to find fault with ambitious, successful, authoritative men."

Walsh says there are also assumptions women are more ethical than men, so that even when there is an appearance of a transgression – which Walsh emphasizes this is not – it's harder for women to recover.

"Women are placed on a pedestal, so the fall can be much greater," she says. "We have so many examples of men who've had affairs and they have a tearful apology and their wife stands next to them and they continue to serve in office and get reelected. Whereas here we have a case of a woman dancing at a party at her friend's house and it's as though she's done some incredibly immoral or illegal act."

Anderson says the public is not consistent in its expectations and treatment of male and female leaders.

"What is particularly galling about the response to these pictures is the fact that high-status, powerful men have partied with child traffickers," she says. "Men in positions of power are credibly accused of groping people, of paying for sex, and again, in the case of Jeffrey Epstein's friends, criminal behavior against minors."

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Experts say for Marin, sexism and ageism may be at play

Walsh says the level of scrutiny Marin is facing not only stems from her gender, but also her age.

"When you are young and in politics, you can be held to a standard that is higher than one would expect," Walsh says. "It's hard not to think that there is a piece of this that is gendered and also ageist."

In 2019, critics of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., criticized a video of her dancing on the roof of a building while she was in college. She responded by posting a new video of her dancing, this time outside her office on Capitol Hill.

'Some people are ready for them to fail'

Anderson says the criticisms of Marin underscore the tenuous position of women in politics.

She cites a phenomenon social psychologists call the "pratfall effect." The idea is when a seemingly perfect person messes up, people see them as more human, because they show themselves to be like the rest of us. The effect, she says, does not apply to mediocre people. But women leaders also do not benefit from the pratfall effect the way men do, particularly white men.

"Unfortunately, some people are ready for them to fail," Anderson says. "If a man politician who is seen as stoic and level-headed, weeps in a certain situation – national tragedy perhaps – we don't react by assuming he's too emotional or cannot handle the job. We think, wow, he is moved, he is powerful, he cares. However, if a woman politician cries, we are quick to assume she's hysterical, overly emotional, and can't handle the position."

Marin didn't break the law or cause harm. As she told reporters, she has a family life, a work life and time she spends with friends.

"I am less concerned with a head of state dancing at a party," Anderson says, "than a head of state trampling on democracy."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sanna Marin party videos show the sexism women politicians face