Elise (pseud. Ottar) Ottesen-Jensen

1886 - 1973

Norway

Elise Ottesen-Jensen started as a journalist and social debater with the Norwegian workers’ press and took part in the first attempts to organise low-wage female workers. In 1913, she met the Swedish syndicalist and anti-militarist Albert Jensen and settled with him in Sweden, where she travelled up and down the country in the 1920s, holding sex education talks as part of her battle to remove the ban on birth control.

She issued sexual-political leaflets and established the RFSU (Riksförbundet för sexuell upplysning – the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education) in 1933. In 1932, she published the stories Människor i nöd – det sexuella mörkrets offer, and in 1965 she published the first volume of her autobiography Och livet skrev, followed by Och livet skrev vidare, 1966.

Further reading

Doris H. Linder: Crusader for sex education: Elise Ottesen-Jensen (1886-1973) in Scandinavia and on the international scene, 1996