Frida Stéenhoff

Helga Frideborg "Frida" Maria Stéenhoff, née Wadström (11 December 1865, in Stockholm – 22 June 1945, in Stockholm), was a Swedish writer and women's rights activist. She was a leading participant of the public debate of gender equality and a contributor of several radical progressive publications. She was engaged in the women suffrage movement and several humanitarian organisations.

Frida Stéenhoff

During World War II, she participated in anti-fascist work. Frida Stéenhoff was a leading central figure of the free love movement in Sweden, for birth control, sex and romance without marriage, and critical toward the institution of marriage, subjects for which she became controversially known by her debut novel: Lejonets unge (Lion's Child) from 1896. She is credited with having introduced the modern concept of feminism in Sweden with her publication Feminismens moral (Feminist Morality) from 1903.

She used the male pseudonym Harald Gate. She was among the contributors to the feminist magazine Tidevarvet.[1]

Frida Stéenhoff was born to the chaplain Carl Bernhard Philonegros Wadström (1831–1918) and Helga Westdahl (1838–1879) and the sister of the suffragist and writer Ellen Hagen. In 1887 she married the physician Gotthilf Stéenhoff.