Career or Family? The Fight of Two Prominent Scandinavian Feminist Politicians

Abstract

Internationally, in the twentieth century, women in higher and managerial occupations were confronted with barriers because they had to fight prejudices concerning their ability to maintain themselves in traditionally male occupations. This was the case for instance, with women politicians in the West. More than their male colleagues, women politicians had to prove that they were fit for the job. At the same time they were supposed to have a special responsibility for their private sphere. This was more difficult in the period before the second feminist wave than after, but it became never easy. Even in the Scandinavian countries, seen as triumphs of emancipation, at least from the 1970s, it continued to be a struggle.

This article intends to delve deeper into the situation in two Scandinavian countries, Sweden and Norway. It will deal with two prominent political women leaders from these countries, namely Alva Myrdal (1902-1986) and Gro Harlem Brundtland (1939-). Myrdal was a powerful political intellectual and cabinet minister in Sweden. Brundtland would become the first Norwegian woman Prime Minister. In recent years increasing amounts of literature on female political leadership have appeared, but these are often general overviews from a political or sociological perspective. Such general facts and insights are useful, but there is also a need to explore the lives and careers of individual female political leaders. In this way we can expand the insight into how women attempt to gain admittance to political parties and the field of parliamentary and governmental politics. Both Myrdal and Brundtland have had to deal with the snares inherent in the combination of their public and private lives. Their personal biographies give evidence of this: in both cases we are dealing with feminists who attempted to find solutions for their personal problems and at the same time for those of society as a whole. These are solutions that were implemented in reality in their own countries during the second wave of feminism, and found their resonance in other countries. Nevertheless both politicians came up against the boundaries of the feasibility of their own lives, something that for them, as social-democrats – traditional believers in feasibility – must have come as a blow.