Finland has often been regarded as ‘model’ country of gender equality, with high achieving girls. Social policies emphasise gender neutral citizenship (Anttonen 2001) and the rhetoric of equality and sameness construct the myth of the ‘strong Finnish woman’ (Lahelma 2006) and the idea of ‘genderless gender’ (Lempiäinen 2000). Young women who reached adulthood at the end of 20th century have learned at school and through media the good position of Finnish women – compared to women in some other countries. They have also learned the travelling discourse of the worry speech of the poorly achieving boys (Arnesen, Lahelma & Öhrn 2008, Lahelma 2005). Their mothers have participated full time in the labour market. How do they reflect their own paths through education and how they see their possibilities and futures in Finland, and what is the impact of gender in their reflections? In this paper I ask how gendered citizenship is learned by a couple of contemporary young white Finnish women, living in Helsinki. The paper discusses their reflections as well as my interpretations about their gradual growing up to adult womanhood and the gendered learning that is overt or covert. I will ask how they are positioned and position them selves within the femininities available. I will analyse the ways they are, have, do, enact, challenge, negotiate and perform gender at various ages, and pay attention to the formal as well as non-formal and informal contexts of learning. My understanding of gender is inspired both by post-structural and by materialistic feminist perspectives. In this paper I reflect young women’s gender and sexuality using the four levels that Stevi Jackson, for example, has suggested: structure, cultural distinction, everyday practices and subjectivity (Jackson 2001). The paper draws from an ethnographically grounded longitudinal life history study in which I, together with Tuula Gordon, followed the paths of young people from two secondary schools in Helsinki into varied positions in adulthood, the age span being from 12 to 24 years. This paper will be a continuation to an article in which Gordon and I discussed, using cross-sectional analysis, the ambivalent relations of the young Finnish women to gendered adulthood at the age of 18 (Gordon & Lahelma 2004; see also Gordon & al. 2005). I now continue the analysis by adding narrative understanding of the life histories of some of these young women.

These young were met in an ethnographic research in two schools in Helsinki (e.g. Gordon, Holland & Lahelma, 2000), when they were aged 12-13, starting secondary school and then interviewed in their paths to adulthood. The aims, plans and practices of these young people, meanings they attach to these, as well as the outcomes are explored in our study. Ways in which social class, gender, ethnicity and locality intersect in their paths to adulthood are traced. The data that I use for this analysis comprise field notes from the ethnography, conducted during the year they started secondary school; their secondary teachers’ interviews; and their own interviews at the ages 13, 18, 20 and 24.

I will suggest that there are ambivalencies in relation to educational achievement, sexuality and gender equality in these young women's reflections, plans, hopes, and actual paths to gendered adult citizenship.