Clara Ottesen (October 30, 1911 – May 8, 1997) was a Norwegian government official, economist, aid worker and politician.
She earned the
cand.oecon.
Candidatus oeconomices (male) or Candidata oeconomices (female), often abbreviated cand.oecon. is an academic degree in economics at Education in Denmark, Danish, Háskóli Íslands, Icelandic and Higher education in Norway, Norwegian universities ...
degree in 1938 and was employed as a senior civil servant in the central government administration. She worked for the Ministry of Supply and Reconstruction and the Ministry of Social Affairs, before she joined the Ministry of Family and Consumer Affairs in 1956. During the 1950s and 1960s she was a key government official within social affairs and gender equality policies in Norway. She served as a
United Nations development expert in
East Pakistan (now
Bangladesh) from 1962 to 1964, resident in
Dhaka, where she worked to develop programs to address the position of women in the then-Pakistani province.
She was Second Vice President of the
Norwegian Association for Women's Rights from 1966 to 1968 and President from 1968 to 1972, in succession to
Eva Kolstad. She was a board member of the
International Alliance of Women from 1967 to 1973. From 1971 she was a member of the Executive Board of the
European Movement in Norway, that was headed by former Foreign Minister
Svenn Stray
Svenn Thorkild Stray (11 February 1922 – 20 May 2012) was a Norwegian politician and a member of the Conservative Party of Norway. He served as a member of parliament from 1958 to 1985, as president of the Nordic Council in 1968, and as fo ...
at the time.
[Elisabeth Lønnå: Stolthet og kvinnekamp: Norsk kvinnesaksforenings historie fra 1913, ]Gyldendal Norsk Forlag
Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS, commonly referred to as Gyldendal N.F. and in Norway often only as Gyldendal, is one of the largest Norwegian publishing houses. It was founded in 1925 after buying rights to publications from the Danish publishing ho ...
, 1996,
References
Norwegian civil servants
Norwegian feminists
1911 births
1997 deaths
Norwegian Association for Women's Rights people
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