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Alexandra Gripenberg (30 August 1857 in Kurkijoki, Viipuri Province – 24 December 1913 in Helsinki) was a Finnish social activist, author, editor, newspaper publisher, and elected politician, and was a leading voice within the movement for women's rights in Finland at the turn of the 20th century. She served as president of the Suomen Naisyhdistys (Finnish Women's Association) and was one of the nineteen women elected to the Parliament of Finland in 1907, among the first women ever to serve in a national parliament in Europe. She was also known as a Fennoman.
Biography
Gripenberg was born in 1857 into a Finland-Swedish noble family, the second youngest of twelve siblings. Her father, Johan Ulrik Sebastian Gripenberg, died when she was twelve years old; the family had by then been living for several years at the Majby estate in Kirkkonummi. She was educated at home by her older sisters, and throughout her life she regretted having had no access to formal schooling, which later drove a sustained interest in educational questions and self-directed study.
As a young woman she worked for several years as a copyist in the household of the celebrated author Zacharias Topelius, at his home at Björkudden in Östersundom. The experience brought her into contact with his daughter Toini Topelius, with whom she struck up a lasting friendship; the two later co-edited the children's magazine Nya Trollsländan together for a number of years.
A period spent with her sister Elisabeth Stenius and brother-in-law in Kuopio proved a turning point. The couple moved in Finnish nationalist circles, giving Gripenberg her first sustained exposure to the Fennoman movement and to writers including Minna Canth and Juhani Aho. This contact with Fennoman ideas became one of the defining commitments of her life, and it was likely her sister who first kindled her interest in the women's cause as well.
