Gro Harlem Brundtland

Prime minister of Norway (1981, 1986-1989, 1990-1996)

• Born: April 20, 1939
• Place of Birth: Oslo, Norway

Labor Party member and medical doctor Brundtland was elected Norway’s first female prime minister, and its youngest. She was active in the women’s rights movement and was a key figure in the legalization of abortion in Norway in the 1970s. She has been noted for her environmentalism, public-health policy work, and advocacy of global economic development.

Early Life

Gro Harlem Brundtland (BREWNT-lahnd) was born Gro Harlem in Oslo, Norway, the daughter of two prominent Labor Party members, Swedish-born Inga Brynolf and Norwegian Gudmund Harlem. When just seven years old, Gro joined the Progress Group, the Norwegian children’s Labor Party. At the age of ten she moved with her family to the United States, where her father was studying rehabilitation medicine on a Rockefeller scholarship. Rehabilitation medicine was in high demand on the heels of World War II. His work inspired her own career in medicine.

Brundtland’s father later accepted a position as a medical consultant on rehabilitation for the United Nations; his expertise took the family to Egypt, thus giving Brundtland her first exposure to the United Nations and its commitments in the field. Her father also served as defense minister in the Norwegian cabinet, which exposed her to even more political and social issues through travel and through discussions around the family dinner table.

Brundtland met her future husband, Arne Olav Brundtland, who was a student of political science, through a Labor Party student group in Oslo. Though a prominent conservative, he was readily accepted into the Harlem family of Labor Party enthusiasts, and the couple was married on December 9, 1960. Inspired to follow in her father’s footsteps as a medical doctor, she received her medical degree from the University of Oslo in 1963 and her masters of public health degree from Harvard University in 1965. For her Harvard thesis, Brundtland researched the patterns and benefits of breast-feeding for women and children in various cultures around the world. Her husband accompanied her to the United States and was a visiting scholar with Henry Kissinger at the Harvard Center for International Affairs.

Life’s Work

From 1968 to 1974, Brundtland served as the assistant medical director of the Oslo Board of Health, part of the Department of Hygiene in the National Directorate of Public Health, dedicating herself to children’s health issues. Her academic focus on prophylactic medicine for mothers and children evolved into research projects in the area of child development. A strong political voice, she was also a key figure in the campaign to legalize abortion in Norway in the 1970s.

From 1974 to 1979, Brundtland was minister of the environment, which provided opportunities for her to focus on issues such as acid rain and land preservation. She worked successfully to protect the Hardangervidda wilderness, Europe’s largest continuous mountain plateau, as a national park, facing sharp opposition from proponents of hydropower and the farmers’ union. When a blowout occurred at the oil platform Bravo in the Ekofisk oil field in 1977, Brundtland was there to coordinate recovery efforts, mitigate environmental damage, and field questions from the international media.

Brundtland’s thoughtful, yet decisive handling of environmental issues as minister of the environment won her the respect of the Norwegian people. She functioned as the deputy leader of the Labor Party, beginning in 1975, and was elected to the Norwegian parliament, or Storting, in 1977. Brundtland was appointed to her first term as prime minister of Norway as a member of the Labor Party in 1981. At age forty-one she was the youngest person and the first woman to hold that position in Norway. She energetically set about to build a cabinet that included eight women, out of eighteen ministers, and she actively championed women’s rights and equal employment opportunities.

In 1983 the UN secretary-general requested that Brundtland establish and lead the World Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland Commission; she subsequently chaired the convention that originated the phrase “sustainable development.” She selected an assortment of politicians and academics to serve on the commission, about half of them from developing countries, and provided a steady, enthusiastic hand to guide discussions at public hearings around the world. From 1986 to 1989 and 1990 to 1996 she again served as Norway’s prime minister, heading minority governments in both terms.

The suicide death of Brundtland’s son, J rgen, prompted her to resign as head of the Labor Party in 1992, but she finished her term as prime minister while dealing with her family’s grief. Brundtland and her husband also had three other children Knut, Kaja, and Ivar.

Brundtland was elected the first female director-general of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) in 1998, a position she held until July, 2003. After her retirement from WHO, she became a distinguished fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 2011, Bruntland was the assassination target of right-wing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik, who detonated a bomb in Olso then killed sixty-nine teenagers on the island of Utøya. Bruntland had given a speech on the island two hours before Breivik arrived; she was not in the vicinity when the attacks occurred.

Significance

Brundtland’s tenure as prime minister of Norway was characterized by a deep commitment to social justice and responsibility, environmentalism, women’s rights, and active participation in global affairs. Her name became synonymous with social democracy and environmental politics. She insisted that at least 40 percent of the candidates on her Labor Party ballot be female. Her strong, decisive ways as a female political leader drew fire from the media throughout her career, yet, she remained unwavering in her vision for a better world, especially for women and children. She believed that Norway should become a member of the European Union, but Norwegians voted against the union in a referendum in 1994; for Brundtland this rejection was devastating.

Many have noted that Norway was not large enough as a nation for a woman with such talent and international ambitions. Clearly, Brundtland gained international prominence as a progressive national leader, a proponent of women’s rights, and an advocate of sustainability, economic development, and public health on a global scale. Her link between health issues and environmentalism made her somewhat unique on the international scene. The Brundtland Commission’s recommendations for global environmentalism provided the momentum for Earth Summit, the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The commission was noted for its openness and inclusiveness in public hearings, and its report to the world, Our Common Future (April, 1987), was a landmark document in the global environmental movement. The report recommended sustainable development, a novel concept involving simultaneous environmental conservation and economic development. Its authors analyzed a wide range of problems, from population dynamics to food security, energy, and the international economy.

While director-general of WHO, Brundtland’s decisive action helped to avert a global outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2003, a feat rewarded with the Policy Leader of the Year Award from Scientific American magazine. She worked to promote WHO projects, including the Tobacco Free Initiative, Roll Back Malaria, and the Stop Tuberculosis Initiative; she also worked on campaigns against poverty, famine, and other communicable diseases. Her agenda included a program to build equitable and sustainable health systems around the world in which WHO would provide both moral and technical guidance. The WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health was established to take the lead.

Brundtland defined public health broadly to include such issues as violence and poverty-related deficiencies such as substandard housing. She facilitated programs to fight polio and to curb smoking, and established a support system for patients to get medicine in developing countries. During her tenure as the head of WHO, she also led major organizational reform and restructuring of the organization, so that it consists of nine clusters, each with an executive director or minister. Like her record as prime minister, she left a legacy of female leadership in WHO by appointing numerous female executive directors.

Brundtland has been recognized with a host of awards, such as the Third World Prize in 1988, the Indira Gandhi Prize in 1989, the Earth and Onassis Prizes in 1992, the World Ecology Award and Global Leadership Prize in 2001, and the Four Freedom Award in 2002.

Bibliography

Brundtland, Gro Harlem. Madam Prime Minister: A Life in Power and Politics. New York: Farrar, 2002.

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---. "UN Efforts for Global Health." Harvard International Review 33.1 (2011): 83–87. Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.

Genovese, Michael A., and Janie S. Steckenrider. Women as Political Leaders: Studies in Gender and Governing. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.

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Till, Brian Michael. Conversations with Power: What Great Presidents and Prime Ministers Can Teach Us about Leadership. New York: Palgrave, 2011. Print.