Ida Blom

The History of Widowhood: A Bibliographic Overview:

Historical research on widowhood in the United States and in Europe, with an emphasis on the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, is still in its infancy. So far certain general perspectives in the changing demographic, economic, and cultural aspects of widowhood have been outlined, and a multitude of cross-cultural variations from the general patterns have also been found. This, as well as the fact that gender-specific consequences of widowhood result in an unequal distribution of sources concerning widows and widowers respectively, indicate the need for future research in the field.

Structures and Agency: a transnational comparison of the struggle for women's suffrage in the Nordic countries during the long 19th century

This article is a transnational comparison of the struggle for womens suffrage during the long 19th century, mainly around 1900, with an emphasis on the five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). The article questions the widespread notion of these countries as similar democratic and peaceful nations, different from the rest of Europe. It points to the timing of womens suffrage and to how the claim for this reform challenged the gendered meaning of political citizenship as well as core elements in the understandings of masculinity and femininity. It proceeds to analyse important structural changes that have been seen as vehicles for womens suffrage: the growth of democracy, the construction of nation states, revolutions and wars, asking if these structures played as important a role in the Nordic countries as elsewhere. Finally, the article concentrates on womens agency, mobilization and organization, looking for similarities and differences among the five Nordic countries.

Fighting Venereal Diseases: Scandinavian Legislation c.1800 to c.1950

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the development of bacteriology contributed to a heightened focus on the individual as the carrier of contagious diseases. This raised the question of how the state could shoulder the responsibility of defending public health without infringing on individual civil liberties. How much coercion of the diseased could be tolerated in order to protect the healthy? Pandemics such as plague and cholera had sometimes led to enforced isolation of the diseased; people suffering from leprosy might be confined to special institutions, and tuberculosis could result in long stays in hospitals and sanatoria. In such cases, however, it was also hoped that certain treatments might eventually cure the patients.1 In a climate of growing public responsibility for a healthy population, measures to prevent venereal disease (VD) also came up for discussion. This paper will discuss legislation adopted in Scandinavian countries from the nineteenth until the middle of the twentieth century to prevent VD. How uniform was this policy, and what were the differences if any among the Scandinavian countries? Following a short presentation of VD policies in a number of European countries, I will compare Swedish, Danish and Norwegian legislation on VD and point to measures that foreshadowed later welfare state policies. As a conclusion, I shall suggest possible explanations for variations in national trajectories. My sources are programmatic, mainly parliamentary documents. I do not attempt to evaluate how the various laws were practised or what it was like to be subjected to the provisions enacted in the laws.

From regulationism to the ‘Scandinavian Sonderweg ’: legislating to prevent venereal diseases in Denmark during the long nineteenth century

In this article I discuss the dilemma between coercion and respect for civil liberties that characterized policies for the prevention of venereal diseases during the nineteenth century. Placing Danish legislation in an international perspective, the gradual change from control of prostitution to the so-called Scandinavian Sonderweg is analysed. Special emphasis is given to parliamentary discussions on the law of 1906, with a view to disentangling the survival of traditional attitudes to sexual morality from burgeoning conceptions of universal welfare policies.

Troubled and Secure Gender Identities in a Changing Society: Norway at the End of the Long Nineteenth Century

At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, Norway changed from a mainly agrarian to a more urban and industrialized society. These changes offered women new possibilities. In 1884 they were admitted to academic studies, and through a complicated process between 1890 and 1913, they gained suffrage rights. Both these events offered women access to worlds that had until then been reserved for men. Consequently, understandings of both masculinity and femininity were questioned. Troubled understandings of gender identities departed from a long period of what in this chapter is called a secure gender identity, accepting hegemonic masculinity and difference femininity as the norm.

The Past and Present of European Women's and Gender History: A Transatlantic Conversation

Ida Blom, Mineke Bosch, Antoinette Burton a.o., Facilitated and edited by Birgitte Soland and Mary Jo Maynes,

How to have healthy children: Responses to the falling birth rate in Norway, c. 1900-1940

This paper focuses on initiatives to improve infant health, as they developed in Norway especially during the interwar period. Falling birth rates were felt as a menace to the survival of the nation and specific initiatives were taken to oppose it. But crises engendered by the reduction in fertility strengthened opportunities for introducing policies to help the fewer children born survive and grow up to become healthy citizens. Legislation supporting mothers started in 1892 increased in the interwar years including economic features. Healthy mother and baby stations and hygienic clinics, aimed at controlling births were developed by voluntary organisations inspired from France and England respectively. A sterilization law (1934) paralleled some German policies.

A centenary of organized feminism in Norway

Abstract Todays feminist movement in Norway, like that of other countries, builds on the ground prepared by the early feminists. Though in many respects differing from their sisters of the late nineteenth century, common characteristics between feminists past and present abound. Never very dominant in number, feminists now as then gradually win support for their views. Drawing on the experiences of early strategies, todays feminists widen the goals of feminism to include fundamental changes in the lives of both women and men. This achievement has in the case of Norway been assisted by favourable economic, social and political circumstances.

FROM COERCIVE POLICIES TO VOLUNTARY INITIATIVES: Legislating to prevent venereal diseases in Denmark during the 20th century

During the twentieth century Danish policies to prevent venereal diseases (VD) were characterized by coercive measures targeting all citizens and formulated in a gender neutral language. Voluntary individual initiatives were only during the 1970s and 1980s accepted as the best means to curb these diseases. This paper analyses debates in the Danish parliament on legislation between 1906 and 1988 to prevent VD, exploring when and why provisions shifted from coercive policies to voluntary initiatives. It considers the possible impact of accepted norms for sexual behaviour as well as of the increasingly influential medical profession. It discusses to what extent VD legislation complied with core elements of emerging and later changing welfare state policies and charts the position of political parties with regard to legislation on VD.

1945: Change or Continuity in European Gender Relations?

On 21 October 1945 — a few months after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had put the final end to the Second World War — Pope Pius XII spoke on the Vatican radio. He was concerned about women’s dignity: Equal rights with men has made woman leave the home, where she used to reign as a queen. This has degraded her true dignity ... her characteristic feminine role and the intimate cooperation between woman and man ... To re-establish as far as possible the honour attached to the woman and the mother in the home — this is the watchword we hear from many quarters, like a cry of terror.1