Sophie Adlersparre

Sophie Adlersparre, née Leijonhufvud, (1823-1895), was a Swedish feminist.

As a girl, Adlersparre lived an isolated and protected life until she became interested in feminist questions inspired by Rosalie Roos, a woman highly intererested in social matters, who had returned after years of travels in 1855.

Adlersparre began her career, as a feminist, by founding the paper "Tidskrift för hemmet" "("A paper for the home")" together with Rosalie Roos in 1859. This was a cultural paper in which she argued for women's rights to higher education and access to more professions; the paper ran for 26 years, and she became its sole director in 1868.

She did what she could to raise the level of women's education by establishing libraries and evening schools for adult women. In 1862, she organized evening classes for women and by 1863 she was founding employment agencys to provide work for poor women. In 1866 she founded a free library for women "for a continuating self-education for a bigger and wider outlook upon life".

In 1869 she married the nobleman Axel Adlersparre (1812-1879), brother of the famed artist and painter Sofia Adlersparre (1808-1862), which also had an effect on her feminist ideas; her husband's dead sister, Sofia Adlersparre, had been a highly appreciated and talented artist, but women were not accepted to study formally on the same terms as men, at the Swedish Royal Academy. Sophie Adlersparre sent a demand to the parliament that same year, that women should be accepted to study art on the same terms as men, and this demand was accepted in 1864.

In 1884, she founded Sweden's first real women's society, "Fredrika Bremer-Förbundet", named after her feminist predecessor, Fredrika Bremer.

Adlersparre became one of the most well known feminist agitators through her career as a journalist, but the right to vote was never her primary goal; she concentrated more on the other aspects of gender equality, mainly the right to higher academic education and the opening of more professions to women. During her lifetime, many of the most important reforms regarding gender equality were made in Sweden. Between 1858 and 1863, unmarried women obtained legal majority as adults; in 1862 women won the right to vote in local elections,; in 1863 several lower professions of state, such as school officials and post officials were opened to women; between 1870 and 1873 universities were open to both sexes and in 1874 girl's schools (of which the first was founded in 1786) were given support from the state and married women given control over their salaries.

Adlersparre was also a noblewoman, and many of her efforts were directed mostly towards satisfying the new needs and ambitions of the women of the middle and the upper-classes, who during this period began to long for a professional life. Her women's union soon became the feminist union of upper-class women.

Source

* Carin Österberg, "Svenska kvinnor", ("Swedish women"), (in Swedish).