A social media post shared in Nigeria claims to have a video showing Finnish women protesting in support of polygamy. However, this claim is false. This old video shows people marching against gender and pay inequality in Switzerland.
A post published on Instagram on December 30, 2023 reads: “Women in Finland protested against men only marrying one wife.” In the post, protesters claim that “as our country’s female population continues to grow rapidly, we want men to marry multiple wives.” Husbands.”
The post, which has been shared more than 500 times, shows a video of several topless women holding placards next to a large French banner that reads: “No to hypersexualization. Free your nipples.” Published.
Several accounts on Facebook (here and here) and TikTok shared the video with similar captions.
According to data published by Statistics Finland in April 2022, only 19,579 marriages were recorded in 2021, 2,503 fewer than the number recorded the previous year. It has been steadily decreasing since at least 2012.
“The decline in marriage rates slowed in the mid-2010s, but the decline has become more severe in recent years,” Statistics Finland said in a 2020 statement.
finnish statistics
However, the claim that the video shows Finnish women marching in support of polygamy is false.
old video from switzerland
Using the InVID-WeVerify video verification tool, AFP Fact Check found a photo posted on X showing the same woman holding the same banner seen in the clip.
This photo was published on June 14, 2019, along with another photo (archive can be found here). The caption includes the hashtags #grevedesfemmes (French for “women’s strike”) and #grevefeministe2019 (French for “feminist strike 2019”), and the photo was taken at a women’s rights protest. It is explained that it was done.
The post’s location indicator showed it was shared from Geneva, Switzerland.
A keyword search for #grevefeministe2019 on A woman with a card was photographed on the street.
A search for the hashtag with other keywords revealed a website dedicated to the protests. According to information on the site, the protest, which dates back to his 1991, has become an annual event aimed at closing the gender pay gap and promoting gender equality (archive here ).
The website also published a link to a photo blog sharing photos of protesters from different Swiss cities using the hashtag #grevedesfemmes (archived here).
AFP photos from the 2019 protests were used in a CNN report (archive here).
The text on the banner shown in the video provides another clue as to the location of the march. Unlike Finland, where Finnish and Swedish are the official languages, French is widely spoken in Switzerland, and it is one of the four official languages (archive here).