Fernanda Nissen

A middle-class woman who became socialist and became dedicated to the case of the working women. She shocked her contemporaries by divorcing her first husband and enter into a new relationship, and by marching in the 1 May parade, side by side with the workers.

Born and grew up in Kragerø. Lived in Kristiania (now: Oslo) her entire adult life, with both her first and second husband.

She began her political carreer in the Norwegian Left Party. She became involved in the strike of the Norwegian female match workers in 1889. After this, she joined the Norwegian Labour Party. The socialists believed in first securing universal voting rights for alle men, before beginning the fight for female emancipation. Feminism and suffragettism were seen as the bourgeois women's cause.

When all men were granted equal voting rights in 1898, the time had come. Nissen argued that female representation not only was a matter of justice, but that women had something new, different and important to add to politics. She was an active politician in Kristiania from 1905 onwards. In 1916, she received more votes than any other candidate to the city council of Kristiania.

She fought to improve the rights and living conditions of working women. When she was editor of the magazin Kvinnen ("The Woman"), which was published by the Labour Party's Women's Association, she stated that such a publication should have been unneccessary. What they wanted was not women's rights, they were human righs.