Anna Gjøstein (15 June 1869 – 6 January 1956) was a Norwegian proponent for

women's rights Women's rights are the rights and Entitlement (fair division), 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 c ...

Personal life

Gjøstein was born in Ås on 15 June 1869, a daughter of Ole Andersen Moberg and Ovidia Simensdatter Skræmma. While she was a child, the family moved to Christiania where she attended ''Sandbergs pikeskole''. She travelled to

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

in the United States with her fiancee Johan Gjøstein, and they married in 1888. In 1889 they moved back to Norway and settled in

Stavanger Stavanger, officially the Stavanger Municipality, is a city and municipalities of Norway, municipality in Norway. It is the third largest city and third largest metropolitan area in Norway (through conurbation with neighboring Sandnes) and the ...

. They were the parents of Ingerid Gjøstein Resi.

Career

Settled in Stavanger, Gjøstein was a co-founder and leader of ''Stavanger Kvinnesaksforening'' and ''Kvinnelig arbeiderforening'' in 1899, and the Stavanger chapter of National Association for Women's Suffrage (Landskvinnestemmerettsforeningen) in 1900. From 1907 to 1912 she represented the Norwegian Labour Party's Women's Federation as correspondent for the international socialist women's movement. She was a delegate from the Women's Federation to the

International Socialist Women's Conferences During the period of the Second International several International Socialist Women's Conferences were held by the representatives of the women organizations of the affiliated Socialist parties. The first two were held in conjunction with the main ...

in Stuttgart 1907, and in Copenhagen in 1910. She was elected member of the city council in Stavanger from 1905 to 1913. A member of the Labour Party, after the split in 1921 (due to the Labour Party joined

Comintern The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...

in 1919), she joined the

Social Democratic Labour Party of Norway The Social Democratic Labour Party of Norway (in Norwegian ''Norges Socialdemokratiske Arbeiderparti'') was a Norwegian political party in the 1920s. Following the Labour Party's entry into the Comintern in 1919 its right wing left the party t ...

''(Norges Socialdemokratiske Arbeoderparti)'', and rejoined the Labour party when the parties merged again in 1927. She was engaged in education of housewives, and in 1927 she initiated the establishment of ''Stavanger '' (to inform women on contraception). Gjøstein died on 6 January 1956.

Personal life

Career

References

Further reading