Blackwell Reference Online

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In addition to being a famous prime minister of Norway in the 1980s and 1990s and the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) (1998–2003), Gro Harlem Brundtland was an important leader of the environmental and feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Born in 1939 to a prominent family of social democrats, Gro Harlem grew up with politics. Her father, who became a cabinet minister twice in the 1950s and 1960s, was a physician who taught his children to care about the health of nature and of society. Gro Harlem's parents raised their children in an egalitarian way, without distinguishing between sons and daughters. When Gro Harlem was a mature woman, she was convinced of the equality of men and women and of the social importance of good health. Like her father, she studied medicine and became a physician. As a university student in the early 1960s she discovered that sexism existed in society. Soon she was attracted to the feminist movement arising in that decade. As a physician and as a social democrat she became an active member of the abortion rights movement, helping women who wanted to get an abortion in a time (before 1978) when it was not yet legalized in Norway. Because of her activism in the abortion rights movement and because of the fact that she repeatedly spoke out on environmental subjects, Brundtland was asked to become a cabinet minister for the environment ... log in or subscribe to read full text