Life
Alma Åkermark was the daughter of the Gothenburg merchant Anton Wilhelm Åkermark and Kristina Kristiansson and sister of the painter Isak Åkermark. Her family was acquainted with the family of the progressive politician and publisher Sven Adolf Hedlund. When she lost her father at the age of sixteen, Hedlund gave her financial support to study music and drawing in Neuchâtel in Switzerland, and upon her return to Sweden in 1881, she supporter herself as a teacher in these subjects at the ''''Framåt'' publication
In 1886, Alma Åkermark, Hilma Angered-Strandberg and Mathilda Hedlund founded the women's publication ''Framåt'' ('Forward'), with Åkermark as editor and the women's association as publisher. Her spouse since 1887, the telegrapher Albert Breinholm, also participated in the magazine. Alma Åkermark was a radical social liberal who supported social reforms and encouraged the paper to be a center of public debate. She controversially participated in the contemporary '' Sedlighetsdebatten'' about sexual double standards between women and men, in which she supported the side that women should be allowed sexual relations outside of marriage, similarly as men were, without being socially ostracized. Her publication of articles with sexual content in the women's paper placed her in confrontation with the moderate women's movement. In 1886, she published the novel '' Pyrrhussegrar'' (' Pyrrhic Victories') by Stella Kleve, in which a dying, virtuous woman regretted having refused sexual pleasure because of social convention. The book caused a scandal as it collided with contemporary sexual double standards, and the paper lost its support from the women's association, though the chair, Mathilda Hedlund, did support her personally.Later life
She left Gothenborg with her spouse and started a new magazine in Nystad in Finland, ''Nya Tag'' ('New Efforts'), which only lasted four months. After the death of her spouse in 1891, she was affected by a depression, and returned to Gothenburg, where she was placed in a mental asylum in 1892. Upon her release in 1896, she left for the United States, where she worked as a pattern instructor for a factory in Chicago. In 1909, she became blind and returned to Sweden, where she was cared for by her relatives.References
Sources
* http://www.ub.gu.se/kvinn/portaler/kvinnotidskrifter/biografier/akermark.xml * Bergenheim, Åsa, Alma, sedligheten och det fria ordet. Ingår i: Obemärkta. - Stockholm, 1995. S. 162–198. * Hirn, Yrjö, Alma Breinholm-Åkermark. - Ingår i: Den förgyllda balustraden. Stockholm, 1953. S. 25–58. * Nyström, Per, Bannlyst: Alma Åkermark och det moderna genombrottet. Ingår i: Tre kvinnor mot tiden. Stockholm, 1994. S. 167–187.Further reading
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Akermark, Alma 1853 births 1933 deaths Swedish women's rights activists Swedish feminists 19th-century Swedish journalists 19th-century Swedish writers 19th-century Swedish women writers Swedish editors Swedish women editors 19th-century women journalists