Loneliness: Being a woman in the Nordic community of historians

From the 1980s onwards, many studies have shown that gender has been fundamental to the social construction of the historical profession, more so than in other related fields. In the nineteenth century, the professionalization of history marginalized women as amateur historians because it was rare for women to have university degrees. However, women had been accepted into universities by the first decades of the twentieth century in most European countries. Although women began to earn academic degrees, they faced severe obstacles and prejudice in the academic world and rarely obtained permanent posts as professors (Porciani and O’Dowd 2004: 3–5;