| Summary: | Throughout the course of the 19th century mankind experienced a lot of changes to the way they were used to live life, mostly due to the expansion of the industrial revolution. But the biggest change was perhaps the change in the conditions for women all over the world. Women no longer wanted to live their lives behind closed doors looking out from the window and thinking of all the things that they could have done with their lives. They wanted to be a part of society and they, sometimes literally, fought for change. In Sweden women got the right to vote in 1921. The way there was long and difficult with a lot of obstacles and prejudice to overcome. But not all of the associations had voting rights for women on their agenda. Some of them were strictly philanthropic. After reading Eva Österberg’s book “Rummet vidgas”, where she discusses her theory about 19th century women in Sweden and the “closed room” that used to be their arena of movement and its expansion during the 19th century, I decided to do a research in my hometown and therefor took a closer look at the first association started by women in 1854 in the little town of Eskilstuna, 90 km from Stockholm. The association was started by a few leading women and their goal was to help the less fortunate children of the community with clothes and shoes so they could attend school and later on be useful members of the society. In doing so the women themselves took their rightful place in the public society. The women were very successful, they achieved well more than they had set out for and the association managed to exist for over a hundred years helping thousands of children.
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