Jytte Hilden, Denmark

Jytte

Jytte Hilden

Jytte Hilden’s Danish home town was only 26 km away from a nuclear power plant in Sweden. In her interview with her niece Juliane Dybkjær, Jytte emphasized that nuclear power is a global, not a national issue and talked about her various political activities against nuclear power and for women’s rights.

1. familiar background

Jytte grew up in an intellectual home. Her dad was an economist, who was in the parliament and was the vice president of the organization Danish Industry. Her mother was a secretary, who was active in the women’s rights movement. Religion played no part in her childhood. Jytte was born during the Second World War, has four children, six grandchildren and lives in Copenhagen. She is an engineer and worked in education until she became active in politics in 1973, when she became a member of the Social Democratic party. She was a member of the parliament for 16 years and Cultural Minister during the mid-nineties. In the 1970’s, she worked on women’s issues – free abortion, equal pay for equal work and so on.

She has always been against nuclear power, but her main issue to work on has always been women’s rights. She was active in OOA (an organization working against nuclear power, who coined the famous “Nuclear power? No thank you”-logo), organizing meetings, writing letters and coordinating demonstrations. She did think about the risks of living close to a country with nuclear power – back then, Sweden had the nuclear power plant Barsebäck, which was located only 26 kms from Copenhagen on the other side of Øresund. In Jytte’s mind, it was crazy to have a nuclear power plant so close to another country’s capital, and that was the motivation for her to join the movement against nuclear power. As an engineer, she was aware that it was a real risk as well.

Read the full interview