Frida Frederikke Caroline Christiane Schmidt (1849–1934) was a Danish teacher, suffragist and a pioneering activist for the

Danish Women's Society The Danish Women's Society or DWS ( da, Dansk Kvindesamfund) is Denmark's oldest women's rights organization. It was founded in 1871 by activist Matilde Bajer and her husband Fredrik Bajer; Fredrik was a Member of Parliament and the 1908 Nobel Pea ...

on the island of

Funen Funen ( da, Fyn, ), with an area of , is the third-largest island of Denmark, after Zealand and Vendsyssel-Thy. It is the 165th-largest island in the world. It is located in the central part of the country and has a population of 469,947 as of ...

. She helped to establish the

Odense Odense ( , , ) is the third largest city in Denmark (behind Copenhagen and Aarhus) and the largest city on the island of Funen. As of 1 January 2022, the city proper had a population of 180,863 while Odense Municipality had a population of 20 ...

branches of both the Women's Suffrage Association in 1889 and the Women's Society in 1890. In the early 1890s, she was one of the strongest advocates for having women's voting rights adopted as part of the Odense organization's programme, years before the Women's Society included the right to vote in their national programme in 1906.

Biography

Born in

Middelfart Middelfart is a town in central Denmark, with a population of 16,277 . The town is the municipal seat of Middelfart Municipality on the island of Funen ( da, Fyn). Etymology The name Middelfart, first recorded as "Mæthælfar" in Valdemar's Cen ...

on 15 August 1849, Frida Frederikke Caroline Christiane Schmidt was the fourth of 10 children parented by the lawyer and district attorney Lorentz Lorentzen Schmidt (1816–1867) and his wife Elisabeth Vanting (1819–1902). On matriculating from school in 1864, unusually for her times, she worked in her father's office, taking dictation and handling correspondence. Mocked by the firm's customers and unable to be a legal witness for documents, she became aware of the second-class status imposed on women. She learnt of the cause for

women's rights Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...

through

Ida Falbe-Hansen Ida Mariette Helene Falbe-Hansen born Hansen (19 February 1849 – 23 September 1922) was a Danish educator, philologist and women's activist. A pioneer in the teaching of Swedish, she published textbooks and promoted Swedish literature in Denmark ...

and the works of Henrik Ibsen. In 1867, she trained as a teacher in Copenhagen's N. Zahle's School, heading Mathiasen's Girls School in Middelfart in 1873. She moved with her parents to Odense but had difficulty in finding a teaching post. As a result, she taught languages at N. Zahle's School, eventually opening a private school with one of her sisters in Odense. Known as Eugenie Schmidts Handelsskole (Eugenie Schmidt's Commercial College), she taught there for 34 years, introducing a completely new subject, social studies. She helped to establish the

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schmidt, Frida 1849 births 1934 deaths People from Middelfart Municipality Danish suffragists Danish women's rights activists 19th-century Danish educators 19th-century Danish women educators 20th-century Danish educators