University of Helsinki

Home away from home

Finnish women who join their spouses on expatriate assignments face a peculiar situation as they assume their position as housewives. The input of these women is usually overlooked although it may be significant even for the companies operating globally.

Companies seeking genuine success today must expand their operations around the world.

Global business requires staff that are prepared to treat the whole world as a potential home and to travel from country to country, depending on where the company opens its branches to support sales or sets up factories to decrease costs. The majority of employees on expatriate assignments are still men and over 80 per cent of them live in permanent relationships.

The negotiations that the employee undergoes with the employer are still regarded as being exclusively a matter between the two parties. However, a third party is strongly present in the background: the spouse who follows the employee abroad. “Women have a very important role as a trailing wife. Should they refuse to follow their husbands, most of the assignments would never take place. My study brings trailing wives to the fore as actors in their own right in the global economy alongside their husbands,” says Annika Oksanen, researcher.

In her doctoral dissertation in the field of social work, she studied the circumstances of Finnish women who had followed their husbands on expatriate assignments. She interviewed 17 Finnish housewives based in Singapore at a time when she herself was living there as a trailing wife.

A peer group provides security

Being a housewife is a position that does not come naturally to most Finnish women. Unlike Western or Southern European countries, Finland lacks certain cultural practices and social structures that make homemaking a generally acceptable choice or even historically understandable. In Finnish society, women working outside the home and earning their own living is the norm, a kind of positive necessity.

“From a Finnish woman’s perspective, the most difficult and surprising part in being a trailing wife is staying at home and being a housewife,” says Oksanen. “Another factor that plays a major role in the lives of the women who live temporarily abroad because of their husbands is the seemingly constant absence of their husbands. Employees who are on an expatriate assignment are expected to give their all to the company, and work longer hours than what we are used to in Finland. The husbands also travel a lot, so the wives will have to live with the fact that their husband is either just leaving or has only just come home. They have to get used to repeated ‘changes of rhythm’ in their relationship.”

Trailing wives also have to build their own social networks whereas their husbands have their work community to rely on. For example, in

Singapore, the group of trailing wives would meet for coffee in each other’s homes. Continuous loneliness makes the network of other trailing wives essential. In practice, seeking the company of other Finnish women in the area who share the same situation means that one has to make friends with people with whom one would not normally have anything in common.

When talking with these women, Oksanen realised that the local culture was not the primary cultural change a family on an expatriate assignment has to adjust to: women stressed the point that in a situation where they move from one country to the next, they are not at all worried about how they will be able to integrate into the

local culture. “People, the language and the customs did not feature much in their stories, they mainly formed a kind of backdrop to their lives. The women I interviewed were mostly concerned about how they would be able to break into the circle of other expatriate housewives in the new situation.”

Exoticism dispelled

The women Oksanen interviewed repeatedly mentioned homesickness. Why do women then follow their husbands on these assignments?

“I would interpret their decisions to move with their husbands as a sign of solidarity within the relationship. Some also like the idea of a sabbatical in an exotic place. Once there, life may turn out to be nothing but the tough job of running the home. Being a housewife may also be detrimental to the self-esteem of women who are used to the dynamic life of a workplace. I would hope, however, that they could see their role in a more positive light, because the fact is that they enable their husbands to make their professional dreams come true which is a tremendous gift to them as well as to their employers and ultimately the Finnish national economy.”

Oksanen started her research from the assumption that trailing wives cannot identify with the prevailing business-oriented interpretation of their experiences. “This, by the way, goes for women of all nationalities, not just Finnish,” Oksanen points out. “Trailing wives lack a public narrative about their life situation. One purpose of my study is to help women who are in a similar situation as I was to recognise their own experiences amongst the predominant public narratives.”

Tough decisions

Annika Oksanen knows from personal experience what the life of a trailing wife is like and this is precisely the reason why she wanted to study the phenomenon scientifically. “Ten years ago I was in a situation where I had to decide for the second time, whether or not to follow my husband abroad. The decision was surprisingly difficult. I was just completing my studies and the children were already in school. I was genuinely afraid that if I left I would be sidelined from the job market. And, in hindsight, my fears were perfectly justified, because that is exactly what seems to have happened,” Oksanen says. She says that she eventually decided to go for very personal reasons.

“In the midst of all that internal turmoil I stopped to think about what all the other women in that situation might think and feel. I was also perplexed not to have come across any public debate on the subject, such as newspaper articles or literature, on what I and numerous other women were going through.” Currently, Oksanen and her family live in Beijing and according to herself she is no longer part of the circle of trailing wives. Usually the assignments are for two or three years at a time.

“In that respect, being a housewife abroad for over ten years put me in the category of ‘chronics’. Writing the dissertation has been part of my personal survival strategy in a situation where I have had no chance to work outside the home. On the other hand, being a trailing wife can also be enjoyable, many women love having more freedom to spend their days as they want. I have noticed, though, that being a trailing wife for a prolonged period is beginning to feel weird,” Oksanen says.

Annika Oksanen: Siirtonaisena Singaporessa - Ulkomaantyökomennuksille mukaan muuttaneet suomalaisnaiset kertovat kokemuksistaan. Yhteis-kuntapolitiikan laitoksen tutkimuksia 2/2006. http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/

Arja-Leena Paavola

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