HELSINKI — The former Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin is taking on what she calls a sexist obsession with her private life in a new memoir, “Hope in Action: A Memoir About the Courage to Lead,” and using it to recount how Finland ditched decades of military nonalignment to join NATO. Published Nov. 4 by Scribner, the book mixes personal trauma, cabinet-room detail, and the tale of Finland’s NATO turn into a manifesto for younger, more diverse leadership, Dec. 8, 2025.
Sanna Marin speaks out about public record misogyny.
Over 256 pages, Sanna Marin tells her story from a working-class “rainbow family” to the world’s youngest prime minister at 34, guiding an all-female cabinet through overlapping crises. When the book was announced, The Associated Press said it would provide a rare inside look at Finland’s bid to join NATO and its radical liberal reforms.
In recent excerpts and interviews with her, Sanna Marin places misogyny at the core. In a piece in coverage from France 24, she writes of chronicling her women-led government under a “torrent of sexism” online and quoting threats — among them, “I have been threatened with rape and other forms of sexual assault so many times that I have lost count” — as evidence that even the idealized world of Nordic politics is not proof against it.
The memoir also revisits the 2022 party-video furore. After a leaked video surfaced of Sanna Marin dancing with friends in private, she drew criticism from conservative commentators who doubted her judgment; Reuters reported that she was upset the footage made its way into the public sphere, and Finnish broadcaster Yle highlighted the fact that she went so far as to volunteer for and pass a drug test. The wave of women who followed, posting their own dance clips in solidarity — documented by The Washington Post — turned the episode into a broader conversation about the double standards young women in power face.
A candid inside look at Finland’s NATO pivot
In foreign policy, Sanna Marin demonstrates how Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine shook Finland out of its decades-old military nonalignment. But in April of that year, she told lawmakers that the NATO decision would occur “within weeks, not months”; a month later, she and President Sauli Niinistö publicly backed membership; and Finland formally joined the organisation on April 4, 2023 — as Reuters and Finnish records report.
She describes that pivot as a race against time, “from late-night phone calls with coalition partners to the moment Finland’s flag flies over NATO headquarters in Brussels,” and connects it to the country’s first deployments under alliance command on NATO’s northern flank.
Now an adviser at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, Sanna Marin insists the book is no farewell. She says that younger leaders must “cherish” some private life — families, friends, even festivals — as they take on public life, a point the recent New Yorker profile also made.
Defiant but restrained, Sanna Marin makes the case in her memoir that how leaders live is part and parcel of how they govern — and that women who lead can’t be expected to vanish from sight to show they’re serious. Linking misogyny, viral scrutiny and Finland’s historic NATO decision, she is gambling that readers will recall more than the dance floor.
