It appears that at any given time, I have one or two major projects going on at Wikipedia (often at the expense of this blog), and I should get into the habit of unleasing my point of view on these pages, since I'm not supposed to in Wikipedia.
Lately, I've written a few stubs and a few half-finished articles on Norwegian feminists. I stumbled across this when I for reasons I can't remember wrote an article on Katti Anker Møller. I got in touch with a few people who know more about the topic than I do and found some recommendations for further articles.
Aside from Katti Anker Møller, one was particularly interesting to me, namely Berit Ås, who was active in politics in the 1970s. She was elected to one term in the Norwegian parliament, as the first leader of the newly founded Socialist Left Party. When she was active, I largely dismissed her as a hopelessly radical politician, dogmatically socialist with no sense of reality. As it turns out, I was mostly wrong.
Berit Ås made a number of hugely important contributions to Norwegian politics. She warned about the hazards of smoking long before anyone else really paid attention. She worked hard on behalf of children's rights and decent housing.
She raised the issue of risk management with respect to offshore drilling and was tragically vindicated in several episodes.
As a feminist, she worked hard to ensure that women had equal rights to political appointments. She pointed out five "master suppression techniques" that women experienced, and once you're done cringing, it's hard to avoid the fact that these were long true.
And she was often subject to scorn and ridicule doing all this. She fought an uphill battle for much of her career and chose to do so for the sake of her fellow women and frankly humankind.
I don't know if I agree with her on many issues. I probably don't. But on some of those she really has worked hard for, she deserves admiration and praise.
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