To Örebro University

The focus here is on six Swedish women struggling as suffrage activists or advocates of women's civil rights, among them three of the first women Members of Parliament. We explore their lives, struggles and strategies. We investigate the various resources they set in motion, and the institional obstacles they encountered on their paths to Parliament and other important arenas that were opened up to women in the changing times around 1900. All managed to build considerable professional, organisational and/or political resources, and all profited significantly from their strategic network-building.

At last! The voice of a woman was heard in the Swedish Parliament! The voice belonged to Agda Östlund, representative of the Social Democratic Party and the first woman to give a speech in Parliament. The event took place on Saturday the 11th of March 1922. Together with other women she had struggled for a more equal and democratic society for more than a decade. Now five women were the first to take seats as Members of Parliament. Finally, women suffrage had become a reality – the final parliamentary decision was made in January 1921. 

Focus in our paper is on Agda Östlund. We explore her path up to the speaker´s chair and the resources that brought her there against the background of some forty women struggling in various ways to achieve, build, and develop higher education, professional work and civil rights for women.  The analysis draws upon this more comprehensive study, recently published. There, our overall purpose is to describe and analyse a number of Stockholm women and their paths from private to public in the decades around 1900. The Swedish capital proved an important site framing material conditions and social networks. By analysing how the women made use of and increased their social, cultural and economic resources we could outline patterns that characterised their ways of gaining access to, influencing or founding various institutions and civil rights – and so contributed to the profound social changes characterising the years around 1900. What strategies did they follow? What assets did they set moving?

In the paper, we summarise some critical aspects characterising three of the first five women that gained access to the Swedish Parliament and two women active on the municipal level. We highlight similarities and dissimilarities and we pinpoint some main results from the wider study of forty women.    

År 2019 var det inte bara 100 år sedan riksdagen formellt beslutade om allmän och lika rösträtt för kvinnor och män. Det var också 100 år sedan folkskolan fick en ny läroplan. Några år dessförinnan hade utbildningen av folkskolans lärare reformerats.  Artikelns huvudpersoner är två lärarutbildare som var verksamma i det här förändringsarbetet – Hedwig Sidner (1852–1929) och Anna Sörensen (1875–1943). Genom sitt arbete bidrog de till att forma centrala vägval i skolans och lärarutbildningens historia. I den här artikeln jämförs de båda kvinnornas liv och verk och diskuteras vad som bidrog till att deras insatser blev möjliga. 

This essay, Educational science, institution, and epistemic objects, includes comments on two themes: “Educational science from university discipline to field of knowledge”, and “Searching for the epistemic objects of educational science”. The approach is partly autobiographic. Taking 1968 as starting point, the institutional conditions and transformations of educational science as a university discipline in Sweden are outlined, primarily using one of the larger departments of education as a case. The analysis highlights the substantial expansion and differentiation that characterize the development and places it within a university reform context. The second theme goes further back in time and highlights the historical roots of education as a university discipline. Epistemic objects of the Herbartian tradition are discussed, as well as of the expanding experimental psychology at the time of the first chair of educational science in Sweden. The great expectations after the Second World War for a new school are outlined together with growing research traditions, highlighting classroom language and the teaching process. In the diversified research landscape of the last decades, studies of curriculum theory, education policy, and history of education are emphasized and a plea is made for critical studies of history and education based on broad theoretical perspectives.