Born: 31 January 1902, Sweden
Died: 1 February 1986
Country most active: Sweden, International
Also known as: Alva Reimer
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
Swedish diplomat, government minister, and author Alva Myrdal was 80 when she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982 for her work advocating for nuclear disarmament. Like many other women in this book, her initial career was as a teacher and she had previously been active in promoting social welfare reform, co-authoring the book The population problem in crisis with her economist husband in the 1930s.
But it was later that Myrdal would broaden her focus internationally. In 1943, she was appointed to the Government Commission on International Post-War Aid and Reconstruction at age 41. She became first the principal director of the United Nations Department of Social Welfare in 1949 and then the director of the UNESCO Department of Social Sciences in 1951. She served as Sweden’s ambassador to India from 1955 to 1961, with duties extending to the neighboring Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) as well. She left that position when she was made special disarmament adviser to the Swedish foreign minister in 1961, and a year later was elected to Parliament, and was soon made head of the Swedish delegation to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. Per her Nobel biography, “During the negotiations in Geneva she played an extremely active role, emerging as the leader of the group of non-aligned nations which endeavoured to bring pressure to bear on the two superpowers to show greater concern for concrete disarmament measures.” As a minister from 1966 to 1973, her portfolio included disarmament. She also wrote and spoke extensively on the topic, winning several awards in addition to the Nobel.