Bodil Begtrup

Overview

Bodil Begtrup born Nyborg, Denmark November 12, 1903 (d. 1987). Danish diplomat and feminist; delegate to League of Nations, 1938; founder and first chair of UN Commission on Women, 1947; led work on Declaration of Human Rights, 1948; first Danish female ambassador, 1949; led rescue of children from war.

Quotations

"If we want the women of the world to take an active part in the affairs of the world and of their communities, we must do more than give them equal status with men and urge them on to active public life—we must make it possible for them to accept their responsibilities as citizens, to freely, and without anxiety or strain, take their place with men in order to accomplish, jointly, with the men of the world, those great tasks that must be fulfilled if thinking and living on this earth are to transcend to any degree at all the thinking and living it has known so far!" (1946, http://bit.ly/SFQwcs; photo Nurn. Menschenrechts Zen.)