Inge Biehl Henningsen (born 1941) is a Danish statistician, academic and writer. A former researcher and lecturer at the universities of

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

and

Aarhus Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwest ...

, she has also been active in politics and

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, ...

, most recently in connection with the

PISA Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the cit ...

approach to student assessment. As editor of the socialist journal ''Naturkampen'' in the 1980s, she covered subjects as varied as the management of

cancer research Cancer research is research into cancer to identify causes and develop strategies for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and cure. Cancer research ranges from epidemiology, molecular bioscience to the performance of clinical trials to evaluate and ...

and the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

's approach to agriculture in the third world.

Biography

Born on 14 April 1941 in the

Frederiksberg Frederiksberg () is a part of the Capital Region of Denmark. It is formally an independent municipality, Frederiksberg Municipality, separate from Copenhagen Municipality, but both are a part of the City of Copenhagen. It occupies an area of ...

district of

, Inge Biehl Henningsen was the daughter of the haberdasher Sven Aage Henningsen (1990–91) and the correspondent Elisabeth Braunstein (1911–96). After matriculating from Holte Gymnasium in 1959, she read statistics at Copenhagen University, graduating in 1966.

Career

On graduating, Henningsen joined the university's Institut for Matematisk Statistik where she taught and carried out research until 2007, becoming an associate professor in 1974. Her interest in politics started when as an undergraduate she joined the socialist ''Studentersamfundet'' (student society). From its establishment in 1967, she was active in the

Left Socialists Left Socialists ( da, Venstresocialisterne) was a political party in Denmark. The party worked on what it called an "undogmatic revolutionary and Marxist basis". It was formed in 1967 as a split from the Socialist People's Party (SF). In 1989 ...

party ('' Venstresocialisterne''), together with her partner Steen Folke, becoming a member of the board and, from the late 1960s, editor of the party's journal ''Politisk Revy''. While on a study trip to the United States (1969–70), she became involved in the emerging New Women's Movement. On her return to Denmark, she promoted the new women's activities for the Left Socialists in the 1970s. From 1980 to 1991, she was editor of ''Naturkampen'', the socialist organ for women who were critically involved in topics such as science and technology, participating in articles on cancer research, technology risk assessment, third world agriculture and AIDS. Both in her professional life and in her extramural activities, Henningsen became an effective communicator, interpreting statistical information for non-specialists, frequently criticizing how statistics were being misused. She became particularly active in the educational sphere, demonstrating, for example, how statistics revealed more limited choices for girls than for boys in regard to the applied sciences. She has also collaborated with women researchers in sociology, politics and psychology, revealing how women did not enjoy the same opportunities as men in higher education and research. In this connection, in 1998 she became a member of the Gender Equality Research Foundation under the Ministry of Research. More recently, on the basis of statistics, she has published articles on the extent to which girls are disadvantaged in Denmark's educational environment, but she also points out that a fair proportion of boys are increasingly considered to be "losers" in the absence of effective vocational programmes and internships. Other topics she has examined with a statistics viewpoint include

bullying Bullying is the use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception (by the bully or by others) of an imba ...

in the classroom (2009 & 2013), gender and educational choices (2008), and a critical examination of the results of the PISA reports (2008 & 2017).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Henningsen, Inge 1941 births Living people Academics from Copenhagen Danish statisticians Danish mathematicians Danish women mathematicians Women statisticians Danish women's rights activists Danish feminists Danish writers Danish women writers Socialist feminists Academic staff of the University of Copenhagen Academic staff of Aarhus University