At only 34 years old, Sanna Marin became the world's youngest prime minister when she was elected to Finland's highest position in 2019. She skyrocketed to fame as the country’s most popular prime minister this century, heading up a coalition government comprised solely of women.
Despite the praise she received for her handling of the Covid pandemic and leading her country to join NATO with overwhelming support, the exuberant left-wing feminist conceded defeat in re-election as the country continued to lean further towards the conservative National Coalition Party (NCP).
Although Marin’s party fell to third place, the Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP) still managed to pick up three seats in the election. Marin was re-elected with a Pirkanmaa district record of 35,623 votes.
Marin was born in 1985 in Helsinki and raised in Tampere. Her parents separated when she was very young and the resulting financial problems the family faced shaped her political focus. She has spoken openly and often about how her working-class upbringing and her politics were influenced by the fact that she was the first person in her family to graduate high school and university.
"I'm extremely proud of Finland. Here, a poor family's child can educate themselves and achieve their goals in life. A cashier can become even a prime minister," Marin wrote on Twitter, directly addressing condescending comments from an Estonian minister regarding her retail job as a teenager.
Marin began her political career at 20 years old, in the years following her high school graduation, beginning her affiliation with the Social Democratic Youth, which she joined in 2006. She served as the organization’s director from 2010 to 2012. She was elected to a seat on the Tampere city council in 2012 where she remained until running successfully for parliament in 2015.
In 2017, Marin was chosen as the first deputy leader of the Social Democrats and was re-elected to the city council. In the 2019 parliamentary elections she retained her seat, and Antti Rinne, leader of the Social Democrats, became prime minister. He named her minister of transport and communications. Marin replaced Rinne as prime minister when he stepped down after a pay dispute involving the postal service threatened the dissolution of the coalition government.