Suzanne Stiver Lie (26 April 1934-28 September 2018) was an American-born Norwegian women's rights activist and professor who worked to develop

Women's Studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppress ...

programs in

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

and

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

. Her major research emphasis was on inequality in higher education and on migrant women.

Early life and education

Suzanne Stiver was born on 26 April 1934 in

Fort Wayne Fort Wayne is a city in and the county seat of Allen County, Indiana, United States. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is west of the Ohio border and south of the Michigan border. The city's population was 263,886 as of the 2020 Censu ...

Allen County, Indiana Allen County is a county in the U.S. state of Indiana. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 385,410, making it the third-most populous county in Indiana. The county seat and largest city is Fort Wayne, the second largest city in Indiana. ...

to Dorothy Irene (née McCurdy) and Edward Raymond Stiver, a pharmacist. She graduated from

South Side High School Southside High School or South Side High School may refer to: *Southside High School (Gadsden, Alabama) *Southside High School (Dallas County, Alabama), a school in the Dallas County Schools system * Southside High School (Batesville, Arkansas) * ...

in 1952 and went on to graduate in 1956 from

Wittenberg College Wittenberg University is a private liberal arts college in Springfield, Ohio. It has 1,326 full-time students representing 33 states and 9 foreign countries. Wittenberg University is associated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. ...

Springfield, Ohio Springfield is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Clark County, Ohio, Clark County. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio and is situated on the Mad River (Ohio), Mad River, Buck Creek, and Beaver Creek, approxim ...

. After her graduation, Stiver spent a year in Berlin teaching English and other subjects in a program sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation. She married Kai Olaf Lie on 22 December 1957 in Allen County. Kai had been an exchange student during Stiver's time at Wittenberg and he would go on to become an ambassador of Norway, causing them to relocate as his work required. The couple moved to Washington, D.C. where Lie worked as a graduate assistant in the sociology department at

American University The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was charte ...

. There she completed her Master's degree in 1967, and a PhD in sociology in 1973 with dissertations evaluating education in Norway.

Career

During the studies for her PhD, Lie was employed at the

Norwegian Institute for Social Research The Norwegian Institute for Social Research ( no, Institutt for samfunnsforskning, ISF) is a private social science research institute based in Oslo, Norway. It was founded in 1950 by Vilhelm Aubert, Arne Næss, Eirik Rinde, and Stein Rokkan. It ...

in Oslo and then was employed at the Agricultural College of Norway in Ås until 1975. She was hired to lecture at the Social Pedagogical Study Alternative unit of the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...

and remained until 1977, when she accepted a two-year research position at Diakonhjemmet University College, evaluating social work practices. When she completed the project, Lie was hired as an assistant professor in the at the University of Oslo. Lie believed work in

women's studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppress ...

was regarded by the institute as of little relevance. Finding little support within Norway, she worked with international researchers in the field to enable her to publish. Her area of study concerned migrating women and women in education. In 1983, she,

Berit Ås Berit Ås (born ''Skarpaas'', 10 April 1928 in Fredrikstad, Norway) is a Norwegian politician, psychologist, and feminist, who is currently Professor Emerita of social psychology at the University of Oslo. She was the first leader of the Social ...

, and Maj Birgit Rørslett, were commissioned to create an experimental project and establish Norway's first Women's University. In 1989, Lie was appointed to head the Women's Studies Program at the University of Oslo and in 1991 became the vice director of equal opportunities at the university in 1991. She earned an appointment as a full professor in 1993. In 1992, the Women's Studies Centre of

Vilnius University Vilnius University ( lt, Vilniaus universitetas) is a public research university, oldest in the Baltic states and in Northern Europe outside the United Kingdom (or 6th overall following foundations of Oxford, Cambridge, St. Andrews, Glasgow and ...

was founded by the Lithuanian Association of University Women. The center invited academics from

Scandinavia Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion#Europe, subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, ...

and the United States to assist in the creation of the curricula. Lie and Ås represented the

. Others involved included Inger Lövkrona of

Lund University , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion Isabel Marcus from the

University at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

, Aili Nenola of the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

, Bruce Nordstrom-Loeb from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

, Elżbieta Pakszys of

Adam Mickiewicz University Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

, and Hildur Ve from the

University of Bergen The University of Bergen ( no, Universitetet i Bergen, ) is a research-intensive state university located in Bergen, Norway. As of 2019, the university has over 4,000 employees and 18,000 students. It was established by an act of parliament in 194 ...

. Between 1995 and 2000, Lie obtained permission from the University of Oslo to work in Tallinn, Estonia, while her husband was posted there. In 1997, she and Eda Sepp co-founded an NGO, (ENUT, Estonian Women's Studies and Research Center) with the help of the educational sciences department of

Tallinn Pedagogical University Tallinn University (TLU; et, Tallinna Ülikool, ''TLÜ'') is a public research university in Estonia. Located in the centre of Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, Tallinn University is one of the three largest institutions of higher education ...

and

Tartu University The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...

. Lie became the academic director of the center, which operated financially and institutionally separately from the universities. In her role as director, she trained the staff and negotiated for funds to support furnishing and equipping the center from the

Nordic Council of Ministers The Nordic Council of Ministers is an intergovernmental forum established after the Helsinki Treaty. The purpose of the Nordic Council of Ministers is to complement the Nordic Council and promote Nordic cooperation. Structure The governme ...

Research

In her research on immigrant women, in such works as ''Mellom to kulturer kvinnelige innvandrere i Norge'' (Between Two Cultures: Female Immigrants in Norway), Lie ignored the stereotypical view of migrants as economically poor women from the Global South and evaluated a broad spectrum of migrating women including those who migrated for economic reasons, refugees, and foreign spouses. She argued that migrant women were not appendages of husbands and questioned immigration policies that treated women as dependent upon a male breadwinner and failed to recognize that their family units might not comply with social norms. Lie also pointed out that migrant women often had difficulty having their educational achievements recognized in their new country and contributed a separate article on Yugoslavian migrants to the anthology. Studies carried out by Lie and Rørslett which began in 1984, noted that academia was particularly difficult as a field for women because unlike women in vocational or artistic fields, gaps in employment impacted their seniority and networking ability. The anthology, ''Storming the Tower: Women in the Academic World'' evaluated the barriers to women's achievements in academia, weighing the differences that characteristics like class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation played as well. The book evaluated the production of women academics and found no differences to their male counterparts in the Netherlands, Norway and the United States, despite discriminatory hiring practices, which often assigned women to temporary or part-time positions or fields like the humanities. Evaluating whether production was hampered for married women, the authors found that in the United States, married women published more often than single women. Their findings also concluded that women who had greater access to networking opportunities were likely to be more productive. The work noted the inability of

women of color The term "person of color" (plural, : people of color or persons of color; abbreviated POC) is primarily used to describe any person who is not considered "White people, white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is primarily a ...

and lesbians to access the same networks often placed them at a disadvantage in academia. The final chapter dealt with mechanisms that women could access, such as the legal system, media, and university policy boards to counterbalance the problems encountered in trying to gain equal treatment, as well as alternatives, such as creating separate women's study centers. At the time, research on women in academia was "rudamentary", as noted by Swedish sociologist

Boel Berner Boel Berner (b. 3 August 1945) is a Swedish sociologist, historian, and editor. Early life and education Karin Boel Christina Berner was born 3 August 1945 in Helsingborg. She graduated with a bachelor's degree from Lund University in 1967, and a ...

and the book addressed issues and solutions but was limited in presenting a global picture and in evaluating why the university setting was singled out for study. In 1994, Lie, Lynda Malik, and Duncan Harris compiled an analysis of higher education across seventeen countries throughout the world, though it did not include Latin America or the Caribbean. Their findings indicated that there was little equality in higher education, though there is not a single cause. According to the research gender inequality stems from various factors including cultural norms, social class, location (urban versus rural) and political systems. For example, despite East/West cultural divides and different political systems, women in Germany were confined to gender specific employment, which was characterized by low pay and little authority. Within academia, though policy often calls for legal equality and scholarship to maximize expertise, power positions are often entrenched with few women rising to the position of full professor. The following year Lie and Rørslett published their findings, ''Alma maters døtre: et århundre med kvinner i akademisk utdanning'' (Alma Mater's Daughters: A Century of Women in Academic Education) from their decade of research on women in academia. In the anthology ''Carrying Linda's Stones'' Lie and the other editors studied the impact of the Soviet period upon Estonian women. It was the first English-language book to collect the histories of those who were forcibly deported or who chose to live in exile. It examined dislocations from a feminist perspective evaluating how socio-political forces impacted women and specifically analyzed how the pseudo-equality of the Soviet period and then the independence of Estonia, pushed women’s issues to the background in the quest for national identity.

Death and legacy

Lie died on 28 September 2018 in Oslo. Lie's studies on women's education and her assistance in founding women's studies programs in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe were significant in developing broader understanding of the meaning of equality and democracy.

Selected works

* * * * * * * * *

References

Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lie, Suzanne Stiver 1934 births 2018 deaths People from Fort Wayne, Indiana Norwegian sociologists Norwegian women sociologists Women's studies academics American emigrants to Norway 20th-century Norwegian women scientists American women sociologists American sociologists Scientists from Oslo Wittenberg University alumni American University alumni Academic staff of the University of Oslo