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Women in Denmark

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History

The legal, civilian, and cultural status of women in prehistoric society during the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age in Scandinavia are somewhat obscure, but Viking Age sources indicate that women were relatively free, compared to men, contemporary societies, and the later Middle Ages.

With the gradual introduction of Catholicism in Scandinavia in the early Middle Ages, women's rights were increasingly regulated and restricted. During the Middle Ages, the legal rights of women in Denmark were regulated by the county laws, the Medieval Scandinavian law (landskabslovene) from the 13th century, and therefore varied somewhat between different counties. However, a married woman was generally under the guardianship of her spouse. Sons and daughters both had right to inheritance, though sisters inherited half of the portion of a brother.

The cities were regulated by the city laws. With the exception of widows, who inherited the right to the trade of her late spouse, women were not allowed membership in the guilds, which monopolized most professions in the cities. However, in practice, it was very common for women, whether married or not, to be granted dispensation to manage a minor business for the sake of her own support and become a købekone (businesswoman), a custom which continued until women were given the same rights as men within commerce in 1857.

The Civil Code of 1683, or Christian 5.s Danske Lov (also enacted in the Danish province of Norway as the Civil Code of 1687 or Christian Vs Norske Lov), defined all unmarried females, regardless of age, as minors under the guardianship of their closest male relative, and a married woman under the guardianship of her spouse, while only widows were of legal majority. This code was in effect until the 19th century: in 1857, unmarried women were given legal majority, while married women were given the same right in 1899.

Girls were included as pupils in the first attempt of a public elementary school system in 1739, though this attempt was not fully realized until 1814. From the foundation of the J. Cl. Todes Døtreskole in the 1780s, schools for secondary education for females were established in the capital of Copenhagen, though female teachers were only allowed to teach girls or very small boys. One of the first schools for females of any note was the Døtreskolen af 1791, and in the 1840s, schools for girls spread outside the capital and a net of secondary education girl schools was established in Denmark. The first college for women, the teachers seminary Den højere Dannelsesanstalt for Damer, was opened in 1846. In 1875, women were given access to university education. In the reformed law of access in 1921, women were formally given access to all professions and positions in society with the exception of some military and clerical positions and the position of judge (given in 1936).

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