Bio: (1902-1986) Swedish sociologist. Alva Myrdal studied at the University of Uppsala. She was the founder and director of the Social Pedagogical Institute in Stockholm, from 1935 to 1948. This institute was an educational institution for teacher education, and Alva established a program that encouraged progressive theories of children's education. After leaving the position of director of the Institute, Alva worked for the United Nations, later she was the Ambassador of Sweden to several countries and the Permanent Representative of Sweden to the General Assembly of the United Nations. After working at the United Nations, she taught sociology at several universities in the United States. At her initiative, the Swedish state founded the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in 1966.

In her books, she addressed issues of education, women's rights, social policy, the establishment of international peace, and nuclear disarmament. Alva and her husband Gunnar Myrdal were the main intellectual representatives of social democracy between the two world wars in Sweden. In the book they wrote together The Crisis in the Population Question (1934 in Swedish), they present a political and economic strategy for creating a social policy aimed at improving the position of families, and also the position of women, which would lead to resolving problems of poverty and declining birth rates in Sweden. They believe that social policy must play an active role in the development and progress of families, individuals, and the whole society, and not only be limited to solving acute problems.

Alva Myrdal continued to deal with the problem of the relationship between the state and the family in the book Nation and Family (1945). Her constant commitment to improving the position of women is evident in the book Women’s Two Roles: Home and Work (1956), which is the result of a large comparative and empirical study she conducted together with the British sociologist Viola Klein. In the 1930s, Alva Myrdal paid great attention to the education of children and youth, both as the director of the Pedagogical Institute, but also as the author of several publications on pedagogy and education. She believed that the roots of all social inequalities stem from inequalities in education.

Alva Myrdal's third major field of intellectual and political activity is the issue of international peace and nuclear disarmament. In the book The Game of Disarmament: How the United States and Russia Run the Arms Race (1977), she sharply criticizes the foreign and domestic policies of two world powers - the United States and the Soviet Union. She believes that these two countries, due to their rivalry, are creating an arms race that benefits their selfish interests and has a detrimental effect on world peace. She has written two more books on this topic, and her enormous work in this area was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982.

Main works

Kris i befolkningsfrågan (1934);

Nation and Family (1945);

Women’s Two Roles: Home and Work (1956);

The Game of Disarmament: How the United States and Russia Run the Arms Race (1977); 

Wars, Weapons, and Everyday Violence (1977); 

Dynamics of European Nuclear Disarmament (1981).