Birgitta Dahl was born in 1937 in Härryda municipality. After graduating in 1956, she studied in Uppsala, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Nordic languages, history, and political science in 1960.
It was in 1960s Uppsala that she became politically active within the Social Democrats. She was elected to the Riksdag as an unmarried mother of small children in 1969, and the fight for equality would become her hallmark.
She fought early on for issues that are now considered self-evident – childcare for all, prohibition of corporal punishment, and criminalization of marital rape.
During the campaign against corporal punishment and marital rape, a common argument was: "shouldn't society interfere with how families live their lives, and besides, this is an old Swedish tradition". That someone could say something so outrageous, says Dahl in the documentary film "Birgitta Dahl's Holy Anger" from 2021.
Notable Skirt
The young politician simultaneously made headlines with her clothing (short skirt!) and for being the first Riksdag member to give birth (unmarried!). The opposition against her was not infrequently strong, and she was heckled by both political opponents and men within her own party.
In 1982, she was appointed Minister of Energy under then-Prime Minister Olof Palme, and four years later became Minister of Environment and Energy, serving until 1990-1991 as Minister of Environment. In that role, she drove through, among other things, the ban on freons.
In an interview with DN from 2021, she describes how she received the first reports of increased radiation at the Forsmark nuclear power plant in the spring of 1986, two months after the murder of Olof Palme.
I called in all the experts, and we could establish that it didn't come from here, she says about what would prove to be fallout from the Chernobyl disaster.
33 Years in the Riksdag
Birgitta Dahl became the Speaker of the Riksdag in 1994, a post she held until 2002, when she retired after 33 years in the Riksdag.
Between 2005 and 2011, she was the chairperson of Unicef Sweden.
Dahl was married to S-veteran Enn Kokk, who worked his entire adult life in various roles within the party and who died in 2019, 82 years old.
Birgitta Dahl became 87 years old.
