Elise Ottesen-Jensen (1886–1973)

Elise Ottesen-Jensen, who used the pen name Ottar, was born in Høyland, Norway, the 17th of 18 children of a clergyman and his wife. Her younger, unmarried sister Magnhild Ottesen became pregnant and was sent away to Denmark to give birth to avoid a family scandal in that highly pious society. After her child died, Magnhild took her own life. The fate of her sister was a powerful driving force behind Ottar's commitment to the struggle for sex education and women's rights. After high school, she became a journalist and a socialist. Unlike the Scandinavia of a generation later, which created state-funded programs to serve people's social needs from cradle to grave, at the time these nations were gripped by poverty, underdevelopment, and illiteracy. Ottar's spirited articles on women's rights, including suffrage, made her well known in working-class circles. In the 1920s, she was a regular columnist for the trade union newspaper Arbetaren (The Worker), focusing on feminist issues. After a disagreement with the other editors in 1925, she started her own paper, Vi kvinnor, which was short-lived. She had a long-term relationship with and later married Swedish journalist and syndicalist Albert Jensen. When he was expelled from Norway for his opposition to World War I, she went with him to Denmark, where she, too, gave birth to a child who died soon after birth. The couple then moved to his native Sweden. There she befriended many physicians, nurses, and social workers who shared her belief in the need to provide women with the ability to limit their family size, as well as the need for sex education in schools. She went on a nationwide speaking tour with a traveling clinic in her car to teach female workers how to avoid pregnancy, an illegal activity for which she risked harsh penalties. She also spread the message through books and pamphlets, such as Unwanted Children (1926) and Tell Your Child the Truth (1945). In 1932, she co-founded the Swedish National League for Sex Education (Riksförbundet för sexuell upplysning, RFSU). She became its first president, a position she held until 1956. During World War II, Ottar assisted Jewish refugees in Sweden who had fled Nazi-occupied Norway and Denmark. In 1945, sex education became obligatory in Sweden's school system. Ottar received many awards for her work, including the 1951 Illis Quorum gold medal for outstanding contributions to Swedish culture, science, or society, from the king of Sweden. She published several volumes of autobiography in the 1960s.