Helle Thorning-Schmidt - on being the first, feminism and the future
MeToo, sexual harassment and sisterly solidarity - Denmark's first female Prime Minister on the responsibility for equality and on the legacy for the younger generations.
Meet Denmark's first female prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, in the Queen's Hall. Thorning-Schmidt visits the Diamond with her controversial and critically acclaimed book, Blondinens Betragtninger, where she shares her perspectives on the debate on gender, feminism and #MeToo.
The feminist who became prime minister
As Denmark's first female prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt has tried being a powerful woman in a male-dominated universe. Thorning-Schmidt's experiences on the road to power and the resistance she has encountered because of her gender are the starting point for Blondinens Betragtninger. With both hardcore statistics and anecdotes from the minefield of power, Thorning-Schmidt analyses the mistakes of the past and the opportunities and challenges that characterise our time. At the same time, Thorning-Schmidt asks herself whether she, as prime minister and declared feminist, did enough to support the equality agenda during her time as prime minister.
Concrete proposals for a world without sexism and gender discrimination
For Helle Thorning-Schmidt, feminism is freedom, and therefore the patriarchal social structure must be challenged - for example, older generations should listen to and learn from younger "woke" generations' approach to gender and sexuality as fluid markers of identity rather than innate truths. In Blondinens Betragtninger, Thorning-Schmidt looks ahead with a number of social scenarios inspired by, for instance, her two children's conscious dealings with gender identities:
"I am opposed to the binary box system we have. We will all be freer if we can be who we are. We should be allowed to be women in 100 different ways and men in 100 different ways. The feminism glasses come to to free us all if we put them on."
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, ALT for Damerne, October 2021
Helle Thorning-Schmidt joined the Social Democratic Party in 1993 and she has a Master's degree in political science from the University of Copenhagen in 1994. In 2005 she became the Social Democratic Party's first female party chairman (person) and in 2011-2015, she was Denmark's first female prime minister. Since then, she has, among other things, been director of Save the Children International.