Alva Myrdal (1902 – 1986)
Alva Myrdal won international recognition as a disarmament negotiator and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982 for her efforts.
She was born in Uppsala and was the oldest child in a fairly well-to-do family. Her father was a socialist and her mother a liberal. The family moved many times. Alva Myrdal studied at Uppsala University and elsewhere, taking a Bachelor of Arts degree in Stockholm in 1924. She married Gunnar Myrdal the same year. They had four children.
In 1929, Alva and Gunnar Myrdal travelled to the United States as Rockefeller Fellows. This gave Alva Myrdal the opportunity to spend a year deepening her studies in psychology, education, particularly children’s education, and sociology. Alva Myrdal was a strong critic of the state of care for preschool children in Sweden. She presented ideas on a new, reformed preschool, based on modern child psychology, in her book Urban Children (1935). The following year, she became director of the National Educational Seminar, where she also taught.
After the Second World War, Alva Myrdal became more involved in international issues. She was head of the UN section on social policy in 1949–1950 and chaired UNESCO’s social science section from 1951 to 1955. Alva Myrdal was the first woman to hold such high positions in the United Nations. From 1956 until 1961, she was Sweden’s ambassador in India. In 1962, she was elected to the Riksdag (the Swedish Parliament) as a Social Democratic member. In 1966 she was appointed a consultative minister at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, with responsibility for disarmament issues. In 1969 she succeeded Olof Palme as minister for ecclesiastical affairs.
Alva Myrdal remained an active opinion-maker for peace and against nuclear armament. She took a very active role in the debate on women’s emancipation. Her ambition was to create a society in which women could participate in working life on the same terms as men.
The Alva Myrdal Centre for Nuclear Disarmament (AMC) at Uppsala University is named after Alva Myrdal. The centre was established in 2021 to provide education, research and policy support in disarmament issues.