{"id":42272,"date":"2025-11-03T12:29:58","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T11:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arbejdermuseet.dk\/?page_id=42272"},"modified":"2026-01-29T08:23:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T07:23:45","slug":"nina-bang","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/arbejdermuseet.dk\/en\/library-archive\/gender-struggle-is-class-struggle\/nina-bang\/","title":{"rendered":"Nina Bang"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Women have always had structurally unequal access to political organization and top positions in society. This has also been the case in the labor movement. One of the most prominent early women at the top of the Social Democratic Party and one of the pioneers of women’s liberation in the early 20th century was Nina Bang.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Anette Eklund Hansen | 21.02.2003<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang grew up in a middle-class family as the sixth of eight children. After school, she worked as a house teacher while studying privately to become a student. She began studying history at the University of Copenhagen in 1889 and graduated with a master’s degree in 1894.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang met her future husband Gustav Bang while studying history. They married in 1895 and had a daughter in 1903. Nina and Gustav Bang had a close working and family relationship until 1915, when he died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina and Gustav Bang were both very interested in Marxist social philosophy. They became members of the Social Democratic Party in 1897, where they played a prominent role as politicians, agitators and journalists at Socialdemokraten. Nina Bang was elected to the main board of the Social Democratic Party in 1903. She was a member of the Copenhagen City Council from 1913-17 and was the first Social Democratic woman elected to the Danish Parliament in 1918. In 1924, Thorvald Stauning appointed her as the first woman in the world as Minister of Education in his government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang worked for better living conditions for the working class. She used her sharp analytical mind to point out problems and provide solutions in day-to-day politics. Although she was against “feminism”, she fought for women and helped shape the party’s women’s policy at the beginning of the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The journalist<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang and her husband Gustav Bang began writing for the Social Democrat newspaper in 1897. She wanted to spread socialist ideas to a wide audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang’s articles were about the very poor social conditions of workers around 1900. About child labor and children in prisons. She wrote about the strict life of working women with long working days and low wages, and how women, unlike men, also had to take care of children and the household when they came home from work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang was interested in foreign policy and economic and trade policy from her student years. From 1909, she became a regular foreign policy writer for Socialdemokraten. Here she was able to use her historical knowledge and Marxist analysis to put foreign policy events into a larger social context. She analyzed the conflicts in the Balkans before the outbreak of World War I. In her articles, she supported the Russian people’s revolt against the Tsardom, but condemned the Bolshevik takeover of the revolution, citing Marx.
After the end of the World War, she lamented the split in the labor movement and gave directions for the future policy of the Labor Party to achieve the desired goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The politician<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang was one of the Social Democratic Party’s leading politicians in the first decades of the 20th century. She was a good speaker and was often used at meetings in large workers’ assemblies, agitating for adherence to socialism and demanding decent living conditions for workers. In her early years, she was particularly concerned with the problems of working women and helped formulate the Social Democratic Party’s women’s policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang began her political career as a member of the Social Democratic Party’s central committee in 1903. In 1913, she was elected to the Copenhagen City Council, where she had the opportunity to work for better conditions for workers. However, she did not achieve any major goals before she resigned in 1917.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women were given the right to vote in the Danish Parliament and Landsting in 1915. In the 1918 parliamentary elections, Nina Bang was elected as the first Social Democratic woman. In total, 5 women were elected to the Landsting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang was involved in many different political areas. She was a member of the important Finance Committee and was the party’s rapporteur on economic issues. She was also often the rapporteur for bills that could improve conditions for women and children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Nina Bang spoke in Parliament, she was a spirited debater who would not compromise. But she could also negotiate solutions. Stauning often used her as a deputy at international conferences. This gave her a large network and many friends among European social democrats. When Stauning appointed his first government in 1924, it was natural that Nina Bang was given a seat. She became Minister of Education and the world’s first female minister in a parliamentary government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang had been interested in children’s development and education from her youth. She wanted to democratize and reform the school system and improve teacher training. The new “People’s School” would teach social subjects and languages so that working-class children were also equipped for the society of the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang didn’t get many laws passed before the Stauning Ministry had to resign in 1926, but many of her ideas were continued in school legislation over the next decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Stauning Ministry 1924 gathered for its first meeting in Kanslergade 10<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The historian<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang was a politician and journalist. Alongside these fields, she continued her work as a researcher in 16th-century commercial history. Nina Bang enrolled in the history program at the University of Copenhagen in 1889. The entire class at the university numbered 314 students, 8 of whom were girls. Nina Bang wanted to study history to get a better background to understand the development of society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together with fellow student Gustav Bang, who later became her husband, Nina Bang published “L\u00e6rebog i Danmarkshistorie” for school children in 1892. Nina and Gustav Bang were both very interested in contemporary history and the study of Marx and Engels’ ideas about the development of society. However, it was the commercial history of the 16th century that particularly attracted Nina Bang’s interest. In 1894, she was the third woman in Denmark to complete her studies of history with a master’s degree in this field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang wanted to continue her research, so she applied for and received funding from the Carlsberg Foundation for a research project on trade policy in the 16th century. She wanted to use source material from the \u00d8resund Trust to produce statistics that could shed light on the history of England, Holland and the Baltic Sea powers. 1. the first volume was published in 1906 with the title: Tabeller over Skibsfart og Varetransporter gennem \u00d8resund 1497- 1660.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the project money ran out, Nina Bang sought to set up a foundation to finance the continuation of the work. She received support from a German professor, as well as cities and trade organizations with an interest in the project. In total, 150,000 ReichsMark was raised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang continued to work on the research project for the rest of her life alongside her political and journalistic work. After her death, the publications were continued by Knud Korst. The work comprises 7 volumes. The last one was published in 1953.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Female politician – women’s politics<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang was a pioneer in many areas: as a historian, politician, journalist, minister and woman. Together with other women, she helped to break the boundaries of what women could do in the society of the time and thus show the way for the next generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was very concerned with the problems of working women and helped formulate the Social Democratic Party’s women’s policy. In her first field as a journalist, she wrote articles about the terrible conditions of working women as workers, women and mothers, but also described visions of what life should be like in a future socialist society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, she was often invited to speak when working women went on strike or at discussion meetings about women’s right to vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With her Marxist background, she had little understanding of the bourgeois women’s movement of the time, which she often criticized in her articles. She believed that in a socialist society, women’s problems would be solved and equality would come automatically. She therefore did not support independent women’s organizations within the Social Democratic Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang was the main organizer of the 2nd International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen in 1910. Here, the differences in the perception of the Social Democratic Party’s women’s policy became clear. Nina Bang followed the line of the socialist parties, while other women from the trade union movement were opposed and had a common position with the Danish Women’s Society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A common theme for social democratic and bourgeois women was the fight for the right to vote. Nina Bang spoke at countless meetings about the demand for the right to vote. Among other things, on International Women’s Day. After the right to vote was implemented in 1915, she repeatedly encouraged working women to use their right to vote for the Social Democratic Party in the fight for a better society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her work in the Danish Parliament and as a minister, she spoke up for women and children and supported bills that could improve women’s lives and opportunities in society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read Nina Bang’s article To the Women<\/a> from 1899<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read her radio talk Peace<\/a> from 1926<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nina Bang in the ABA collections:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Literature by and about Nina Bang<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n