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This paper distinguishes Swedish feminist internationalists in the early Cold War years appointed to high positions at the United Nations (UN) whose political commitments were connected to pluralism, democracy, and a solidarity with the poor. Alva Myrdal, Agda Rössel, and Ulla Lindström were three Swedish women appointed some of the highest positions attained by women in the UN in the late 1940s and 1950s. Their stance on the interrelatedness of women's political and economic rights is in this paper read as characteristic of the Swedish Middle Way. A special focus in the paper is on the parliamentarian debates regarding the Swedish Middle Way in which Ulla Lindström expounded on her experiences from her work as delegate to the UN. Human rights actualized by feminist internationalists included equal pay for women supported by working unions, preschool and day-care facilities for working mothers, as well as social security and social services for families in poverty, but the high-ranking positions of these women at the UN were questioned both domestically and within the UN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper directs itself to the impact of American social science on the writings of Alva and Gunnar Myrdal on the role of education and social science in "modern" industrial democracy. After a brief sketch of the Myrdals' role in the development of Swedish welfare reforms and of their intellectual contacts in the United States during the 1930's, the paper outlines four theoretical "dilemmas" of "modernity" to the solution of which education and social research was seen to contribute: the relationships between facts and values, the individual and the collective, child rearing and social change, and theory and practice. The paper concludes by tracing the articulation of these themes in the Social Democratic Party school reform proposals of 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short article considers four questions about the lives led by Gunnar Myrdal and Alva Myrdal, world-famous Swedish social scientists. What were the social conditions for the development of their ideas? What implications (if any) did their developing social science theories have for their personal lives? Is consistency a necessary requirement in matching words and deeds? Is there any necessary relationship between the public and private lives of eminent scholars and public figures? All three of their children, Jan, Sissela, and Kaj, have written autobiographical accounts which, directly or indirectly, suggest that the Myrdal family was dysfunctional. The implications of this are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can one judge the policies of Alva Myrdal in the Thirties? Alva Myrdal, one of Sweden's best-known feminists, suggested sterilisation in her proposed family policy during that decade. In the internationally reported intensive Swedish debate in the autumn of 1997 on the Swedish forced sterilisation 1935-1975, Alva Myrdal's ideas played a major role. What picture of Alva Myrdal evolves out of that debate, and how does it stand in relationship to her own writings and the general discursive context of the Thirties? Chronocentrism is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]