Signe Bergman

Signe Bergman
Signe Bergman, chairman for the Swedish Society for Woman Suffrage in 1914–1917.
Born	1869
Died	1960
Occupation	clerk
Known for	woman's right activist

Signe Wilhelmina Ulrika Bergman (10 April 1869–1960), was a Swedish feminist. She was the chairperson of the National Association for Women's Suffrage or LKPR in 1914–1917 and the Swedish delegate to International Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1909–1920. She was the organiser of the congress of the Sixth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1911 and the editor of the paper of the LKPR, Rösträtt för kvinnor (Women suffrage).

Signe Bergman was born a member of a family of officials in Stockholm and was given a high but informal education. She spent some years in Great Britain, where she worked in the institute of her cousin Martina Bergman-Österberg, as well as an assistant to a researcher at the British Museum, before she returned to Sweden, where she worked as a clerk at the Sveriges allmänna hypoteksbank. Bergman lived alone in a time when it was considered more suitable for a professional middle class woman to share her flat with a female companion for modesty's sake.

Signe Bergman was one of the leading figures of the Swedish suffrage movement, if not the perhaps most famous during her lifetime. In 1902, two motions regarding women suffrage reform were presented to the Swedish Parliament. One was from the Minister of Justice Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, who suggested that married men be given two votes, as they could be regarded to vote in place of their wives as well. The other motion was presented by Carl Lindhagen, who suggested women suffrage. The Hammarskjöld suggestion aroused anger among women's rights activists, who formed a support group for the Lindhagen motion. On 4 June 1902, Föreningen för Kvinnans Politiska Rösträtt (FKPR) was founded: initially a local Stockholm society, it became a national organization the year after. In 1906–14, she was a member of the central comity of the Stockholm section of the Country Association for Women's Suffrage; in 1907, she became a member of the central comity of the organisation as a whole; and from 1914 until 1917, she was its chairman. She was also the editor of the organisation's paper, and in 1909–20, she was a member of International Woman Suffrage Alliance and represented Sweden on several international suffrage congresses.