Åsa Lindestam

Åsa Margaretha Lindestam (born 24 April 1956 in Söderala, now in Söderhamn Municipality) is a Swedish Social Democratic politician from Gävleborg County. She was a member of the Riksdag for that county from 30 September 2002 until 26 September 2022, and first deputy speaker from 24 September 2018 until the same closing date. In June 2022, after announcing that she would not stand again, she became chair of Pensionärernas riksorganisation (PRO), the Swedish National Pensioners’ Organisation, succeeding Christina Tallberg, and the 2026 congress in Solna re-elected her for a further four-year term.

She qualified as a preschool teacher at the college in Gävle in 1977 and completed national head-teacher training in Uppsala in 1999, with further studies in pedagogy. She worked as a preschool teacher from 1977, as a preschool director from 1983 to 1993, and as a principal from 1993 in Söderhamn. Her parents were the repairman Ragnar Lindestam and the hairdresser Norma Lindestam, born Frölander. Before entering parliament she sat on Söderhamn’s municipal council from 1994 to 2010 and on its executive board from 1999 to 2002, and she chaired the Social Democrats in Gävleborg.

Defence was her main parliamentary brief. She served on the Committee on Defence from 2002, as its deputy chair from 2014 to 2018, on the Defence Commission from 2010 to 2019, and on insight bodies for the Swedish Coast Guard and the Swedish Armed Forces. She was a member of the Riksdag’s delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly from 2007 to 2014, and at the assembly’s 23rd annual session in Baku in July 2014 she was elected chair of the General Committee on Political Affairs and Security in a contest with the United States senator Roger Wicker. From 2014 to 2018 she sat in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. In parallel she chaired Svenska Lottakåren, the Swedish women’s voluntary defence organisation, from her election at the November 2010 national assembly, when she succeeded Eva Flyborg, until 2022.

On 24 September 2018 the new Riksdag elected the Moderate Andreas Norlén as speaker by 203 votes to Lindestam’s 145, departing from the practice that the largest party supplied the speaker, and then chose her as first deputy speaker by acclamation. She left the chamber at the end of the 2018–2022 term after telling Gefle Dagblad in May 2021 that twenty years in national politics was enough. On 13 June 2024 King Carl XVI Gustaf presented her with His Majesty the King’s Medal of the 12th size on the ribbon of the Order of the Seraphim, for meritorious political service.

Early life, education and teaching

Upbringing and family

Åsa Lindestam was born on 24 April 1956 in Söderala, in Söderhamn municipality. The municipality lies in the historical province of Hälsingland and belongs to Gävleborg County.

Her parents, as she reported them for the Riksdag's register of members, were the repairman Ragnar Lindestam and the hairdresser Norma Lindestam, née Frölander. An obituary written by the daughters records that Ragnar, trained as a smith and welder, met Norma in 1949 at a camp of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League in Säter. They married in 1951, built a house and settled in Marmaverken, where their two daughters, Åsa and Pia, were born. He worked at the Marma mill, later kept a workshop in the family house, and then worked as a repairman at Alasågen in Ljusne and at the Vallvik mill until retirement; for a time he chaired the Social Democratic association in Marmaverken.

Lindestam has described a working-class childhood in Marmaverken, a village dominated by a sulfate mill that has since closed, and has said that the smell from the works was part of growing up there. In the same interview she said that her mother trained as a hairdresser and that her father began at the mill and later ran his own welding business. At 14 she joined the youth league, which she has referred to simply as "the Party", and at 18 she moved to Gävle. Summers were spent at the family's cottage by Inre Norrfjärden in the Söderhamn archipelago, a place she has said she has known since she was small.

Training and school career

In 1977 she completed the preschool-teacher line, förskollärarlinjen, at Högskolan i Gävle, the qualification given both in the biography she supplied to the Riksdag and in later profiles. The college, then named Högskolan i Gävle/Sandviken, was established on 1 July 1977. It continued two teacher-training institutions already based in Gävle, the preschool seminary and the teacher-training college.

The same Riksdag biography lists further studies in pedagogy and related subjects, without naming a provider, and a national principal-training course in Uppsala in 1999. Uppsala University has run education for principals, commissioned by the Swedish National Agency for Education, since 1992.

She recorded her employment as preschool teacher from 1977, föreståndare from 1983 to 1993, and rektor from 1993. She has later written that she is a preschool teacher by background and that she early became principal of a number of schools and preschools. The parliamentary register continued to give her profession as rektor.

Those posts belonged to a municipal school system that was being reorganised around her. In 1991 municipalities became the employers of teachers and school leaders, after the Riksdag shifted responsibility for schooling from detailed state control toward local government. The new national agency was then charged with a state programme for principals. A 1998 government bill, prop. 1997/98:93, set out the first national curriculum for preschool and treated förskolan as part of the education system rather than only as a social-services responsibility. Her biography still listed her as rektor, the post she had held since 1993, when she took her seat in the Riksdag on 30 September 2002 and parliamentary work replaced school leadership as her full-time occupation.

Local politics and the Social Democrats

Söderhamn municipality

Åsa Lindestam’s municipal offices were in Söderhamn, in Hälsingland, Gävleborg County, where the Swedish Social Democratic Party held the municipal executive without a break for 97 years until 2018. The year spans below come from the biography she supplied to the Riksdag register Fakta om folkvalda. She sat on the property committee (fastighetsnämnden) from 1988 to 1991 and the building committee (byggnadsnämnden) from 1992 to 1993, then on the municipal council (kommunfullmäktige) from 1994 to 2010. From 1995 to 1999 she was vice chair of the social welfare committee (socialnämnden) and a member of a preparatory working committee (arbetsutskott) that the register does not tie to a named board. She sat on the municipal executive board (kommunstyrelsen) from 1999 to 2002, on the board of the economic association Söderhamn Turism from 1998 to 2002, and on the board of Söderhamns stadshus from 2000 to 2002. A 2016 profile in Söderhamns-Kuriren listed the same bodies—council, executive board, and the social, building and property committees—without years.

The full-time commissionership was held by other Social Democrats in the town. Eva Lindberg was municipal commissioner (kommunalråd) for eight years before moving into regional politics, and by 2022 chaired the board of Region Gävleborg. Sven-Erik Lindestam, Åsa Lindestam’s husband, was commissioner for the eight years up to the 2018 election. She kept her council seat after entering the Riksdag in 2002 and left it in 2010, and from 2002 to 2009 she chaired Söderhamn’s arbetarekommun, the local party organisation.

In the 2018 municipal election the Social Democrats fell by 9.12 percentage points, to 27.51 percent and 14 of 49 seats, from 36.64 percent and 18 seats in 2014. The Centre Party rose to 22.57 percent and 11 seats, and the Sweden Democrats took 15.09 percent and eight. The Centre Party, the Moderate Party, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats together held 22 seats and formed a minority administration. Magnus Svensson of the Centre Party said the parties were following voters who wanted a change of municipal government. Alexandra Gard, chair of the Social Democrats in Söderhamn, said the party would not block a handover and would then be an active opposition. Sven-Erik Lindestam, the party’s lead candidate, told its nomination committee he would not stand as opposition commissioner; Söderhamns-Kuriren reported that he was also expected to leave the council before the new year, quoting him that people had not voted for him to sit in the back seat.

District and women’s organisation

On the Gävleborg district board she was vice chair from 2002 to 2006, a substitute from 2006 to 2010 and a full member from 2010 to 2014. In February 2016 the nomination committee unanimously proposed her to succeed Yoomi Renström, who after five years as county chair was leaving for the European Committee of the Regions in Brussels, where she chaired the SEDEC commission, and for the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. The annual congress in Hudiksvall elected Lindestam on 2 April 2016; Alexandra Gard and Sven-Olof Larsson joined the district board at the same meeting. Lindestam said that experience of leadership at several levels made it appealing to develop the party’s policy in the county. By her 60th birthday later that month Söderhamns-Kuriren described her as district chair.

She held the chair for four years. A district congress reported on 14 June 2020 elected a successor. Peter Kärnström, municipal commissioner in Sandviken, took the post and was re-elected at the district congress there in April 2024. While still district chair she entered the national party executive (partistyrelsen) at the congress in Gothenburg. Ljusnan reported the vote on the congress’s penultimate day, 11 April 2017, as one of eight new members; the party’s list names her as the ordinary member for Gävleborg. For the congress of 3–7 November 2021 the nomination committee proposed Kärnström, not Lindestam, and he was elected on 7 November.

The same period ran through Social Democratic Women in Sweden (S-kvinnor). In Gävleborg she was study organiser from 2005 to 2010 and vice chair from 2005, and chair of the county organisation from 2012 to 2016; in Söderhamn she was the local club’s study organiser from 2007 to 2011. Nationally she was a substitute on S-kvinnor’s executive from 2011 to 2015 and a full member in 2015–2016, and Söderhamns-Kuriren still listed her on that board in April 2016. By November 2017 Marie Frestadius signed a Gefle Dagblad article as chair of S-kvinnor in Gävleborg, with Margareta Nilsson chair of the Söderhamn club and Carina Ohlsson the federation’s national president.

Parliamentary career

Elections and the Gävleborg seat

Åsa Lindestam was an ordinary member of the Riksdag for the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 30 September 2002 to 26 September 2022, elected for Gävleborg County. In a constituency, candidates who clear the personal-vote threshold — 5 percent of their party's votes there — are seated first; remaining seats follow the party ballot. She was returned at five general elections and did not stand in 2022.

In 2002 the Social Democrats polled 74,155 votes in the constituency, 44.96 percent, and took five of 11 seats; turnout was 77.65 percent, and she took her seat with that intake. In 2006 the party fell to 69,959 votes and 41.71 percent but kept five of 11 seats. In 2010 it won 67,893 votes, 38.30 percent, and four seats in a constituency then allocated 12. In 2014 it received 70,150 votes, 38.23 percent, and four of 11 seats.

At the Gävleborg district congress in March 2018 the party placed Lindestam, from Söderhamn, first on its Riksdag list, ahead of Patrik Lundqvist of Sandviken and Elin Lundgren of Gävle. The Social Democrats then took 63,232 votes, 34.10 percent, and three of the constituency's nine seats, one fewer than in 2014; turnout was 86.29 percent. On 31 May 2021 she said the term then running would be her last, telling Gefle Dagblad that twenty years in national politics was enough. SVT reported the following day that she would not be a candidate after the 2022 election. In that election the party still polled 63,415 votes in the county, 34.73 percent, and won four of 11 seats: the constituency had nine fixed seats, and adjustment seats went to the Christian Democrats and the Left Party, not to the Social Democrats. Her mandate ended on 26 September 2022.

Committees, motions and constituency work

The Riksdag has 349 members, elected for four years. Standing committees of 17 members, mirroring the party balance, prepare decisions that the chamber in Stockholm then debates and votes on. Members usually vote with their party, but the mandate is personal and there is no formal duty to follow the group. They may table motions on a government bill and, once a year in the general motions period, on any matter the Riksdag can decide; time away from the chamber is spent in the constituency.

Her ordinary committee seat was on the Committee on Defence. That assignment, her places on the delegations to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and her term as first deputy speaker are covered elsewhere. Outside defence she was a substitute on the Committee on Social Insurance and the transport committee from 8 October 2002 to 2 October 2006, and on the Committee on Education from 23 March 2012 to 29 September 2014. On the Committee on European Union Affairs she was a substitute from 1 April 2008, a full member from 12 to 18 October 2010, and a substitute again until 19 May 2011. She was a substitute on the nominating committee (valberedningen) from 2006 until September 2018.

As first deputy speaker from 24 September 2018 she held no ordinary committee seat. She was again an education-committee substitute from 27 February 2019 until the end of the term. On 18 March 2020 the chamber enlarged standing-committee substitute lists, in several cases from about 30 places to more than 300, and from that date she was a substitute on most committees, including social insurance, transport, justice and EU affairs, until 26 September 2022. Parallel substitute places on the defence committee, the Committee on the Constitution and the Committee on Foreign Affairs ran only until 3 September 2020.

Open data lists 609 motions in which she appears and 43 written questions. In October 2002 she asked for stable funding for women's shelters close enough to home that children would not lose contact with preschool or school; the committee proposed rejection and the chamber rejected the motion. Motion 2003/04:Ju365, Kvinnors utsatthet, lodged on 7 October 2003, argued that rape trials turned on whether a woman had objected or resisted, and that the court should look only at the perpetrator's conduct. The Justice Committee took it with the sexual-offences bill in report 2004/05:JuU16, recommended rejection, and the chamber rejected it by acclamation.

Later motions stayed with equality and the county. In 2008, as the equality and other discrimination ombudsmen were being folded into one Discrimination Ombudsman, she proposed a separate gender-equality authority; the chamber rejected the motion. With other Social Democrats she moved in 2010 for measures to improve gender equality in the forest counties, and the chamber again rejected the proposal. In 2013 she and co-signatories asked the Riksdag to press for parental insurance divided into three equal parts, as a step toward an even take-up of the benefit; that motion was also rejected. In 2020 she asked for regional weight in the distribution of higher-education programmes and places, a constituency motion the chamber likewise rejected.

Defence and total defence

Committee on Defence

Åsa Lindestam sat on the Riksdag's Committee on Defence for most of her two decades as a member: a full member from 8 October 2002 to 2 October 2006, 10 October 2006 to 4 October 2010 and 12 October 2010 to 29 September 2014; vice chair from 7 October 2014 to 24 September 2018; and a deputy member from 18 March to 3 September 2020.

In October 2014 the chair went to Allan Widman of the Liberals, then the Liberal People's Party, rather than to the Swedish Social Democratic Party or the Moderate Party, which had customarily held it. Lindestam, who had sat with Hultqvist on the Defence Commission, was the Social Democratic vice chair during his time as defence minister.

On the joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence she held repeated short appointments from 2002, including spells as vice chair in 2015–2018 and the chair from 28 April to 25 May 2016. Its report on the host-nation support memorandum with NATO, 2015/16:UFöU4, went forward in her name and recommended approval of the memorandum signed on 4 September 2014. The Sweden Democrats and the Left Party reserved against the bill; the Moderates, the Centre Party, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats filed a separate statement.

On 24 July 2018, during the summer's forest fires, the Alliance parties called an extra meeting and summoned Hultqvist and Interior Minister Morgan Johansson. Lindestam called it unnecessary: she already had the answers, those fighting the fires should be left to work, and changes should wait for an evaluation. Oscarsson said members represented the public and needed the information. Ask said the questions were how parliament held the government to account.

Defence Commission and total defence

Her Riksdag biography, based on information she supplied, lists her on the Defence Commission (Försvarsberedningen) from 2010 to 2019. Under Moderate chair Cecilia Widegren she signed Vägval i en globaliserad värld (Ds 2013:33), a global survey centred on Russia and the neighbourhood; the members included Hultqvist, Hans Wallmark, Peter Rådberg of the Green Party, Widman and Mikael Oscarsson. Försvaret av Sverige (Ds 2014:20), delivered to Defence Minister Karin Enström on 15 May 2014 after an extension to cover Russia's conduct in Ukraine, drew a reservation from Lindestam, Hultqvist and Urban Ahlin: they backed the report but said the Armed Forces needed more money for 2014–2019 than the government had proposed.

Under Björn von Sydow, and on instructions Hultqvist gave on 9 January 2017, Motståndskraft (Ds 2017:66) set total defence and civil defence for 2021–2025. With Lindestam a member, it said an armed attack could not be excluded, that total defence should deter war, and that Sweden should plan for at least three months of security crisis in Europe and the neighbourhood, including war on Swedish territory, with individuals ready to cope for a week without public support. It reported agreement on the main lines, with dissents from Wallmark, Karin Enström and Beatrice Ask, Mikael Jansson of the Sweden Democrats, Daniel Bäckström of the Centre Party, Lotta Johnsson Fornarve of the Left Party, Widman and Oscarsson.

In May 2015 Lindestam told Mora Tidning that the Social Democrats had opposed abolishing general conscription, that personnel should be supplied by both voluntary service and duty, and that military defence presupposed a broad popular anchoring. On 2 March 2017 the government again required women and men liable for total defence to muster and complete basic training under conscription, and told the Swedish Armed Forces to plan for at least 4,000 conscripts a year in 2018 and 2019, because volunteers alone could not fill wartime units. Hultqvist told SVT that full, exercised wartime units required conscription alongside volunteers.

In August 2015 she and Kenneth G. Forslund, Social Democratic chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, wrote that military non-alignment remained basic policy and that cooperation, not isolation, preserved freedom of action after Russia's annexation of Crimea. They treated the host-nation memorandum as an extension of the Partnership for Peace, usable only on a Swedish invitation and outside NATO's Article 5. Enström and Wallmark replied that deeper cooperation was not enough without a decision to join, and asked for a roadmap toward an application in the next term. Lindestam answered that the Moderates had opened no such inquiry in eight years of government, and that bilateral ties with Finland, Denmark, the Baltic states and the United States would matter before NATO could act.

Oversight bodies and the War Delegation

The biography records her as a Swedish Coast Guard board member in 2003–2006 and a member of the Armed Forces' insight council in 2014–2018. The Civil Contingencies Agency's 2014 annual report names her on its insight council; the biography lists that post without an end year. She was a substitute on the Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs from 7 October 2014 to 2 October 2018. The King chairs the council — the Speaker, nine members and nine substitutes — and the government must keep it informed and, where possible, consult it before major foreign-policy decisions.

The Riksdag elected her to the War Delegation for 14 October 2014–9 October 2018 and again from 6 November 2018 to 26 September 2022. The Speaker and 50 members can replace the Riksdag in war or danger of war; the Speaker chairs the delegation, and the Advisory Council's members decide on activation, together with the prime minister if the case is a danger of war. In January 2019 it elected Lindestam, then first deputy speaker, vice chair, with Speaker Andreas Norlén as chair, Mia Sydow Mölleby of the Left Party second vice chair and Kerstin Lundgren of the Centre Party third. The Sweden Democrats' nominee, Paula Bieler, was defeated; group leader Mattias Karlsson said the other parties had dropped proportionality. Her chairmanship of Svenska Lottakåren is treated separately.

International parliamentary assemblies

OSCE Parliamentary Assembly

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is the parliamentary body of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Established in 1990, it has 323 members from 57 participating states, plus substitutes, and a secretariat in Copenhagen. It meets at an annual session and at winter and autumn meetings. Three general committees follow the politico-military, economic and environmental, and human dimensions, and the plenary decides by majority. It debates conflict resolution and whether governments follow its recommendations, and observes elections with the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights; since 2013 it has also named a head of its own delegation. The Riksdag elects eight members and eight substitutes.

Åsa Lindestam, of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, was a substitute from 1 April 2004 to 3 October 2007 and an ordinary member from 4 October 2007 to 14 October 2014. In 2010–2014 she sat on the General Committee on Political Affairs and Security with Kent Härstedt and Christian Holm, under delegation chair Walburga Habsburg Douglas and deputy chair Härstedt. She took part in observation missions in Armenia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Georgia, Russia, the United States and Ukraine, including Ukraine’s presidential election on 25 May 2014. On 10 August 2014 she headed the OSCE PA delegation for Turkey’s first direct presidential election, while Vilija Aleknaite Abramikiene of Lithuania was special co-ordinator of the wider short-term mission. She had already chaired the political-affairs and security committee after the Monaco session of 5–9 July 2012, when Susanne Bratli of Norway and Aleknaite Abramikiene were re-elected vice-chair and rapporteur and a general-committee bureau was for the first time made up entirely of women.

The 23rd Annual Session met in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 28 June to 2 July 2014, on the theme “Helsinki +40: Towards Human Security for All,” referring to the Helsinki Final Act. Nearly 300 parliamentarians attended. The crisis in Ukraine dominated, and a supplementary resolution condemning Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty was adopted; Lindestam and Härstedt spoke on the need for peace and democratic reconstruction. In that committee, rapporteur Pia Kauma of Finland proposed updating confidence-building measures and arms control, including the Vienna Document. Lindestam spoke on education in Afghanistan, and the committee also adopted texts on mediation, South-East Europe, terrorism and Afghanistan. The session closed with the Baku Declaration.

The committee then chose a bureau for one year: Lindestam as chair, Azay Guliyev of Azerbaijan re-elected vice-chair, and Kauma re-elected rapporteur. United States senator Roger Wicker had also stood. Lindestam told Ljusnan that she had won by nine votes and described her opponent as a senator from Minnesota; the Assembly later recorded that the candidate in Baku was Wicker of Mississippi. All three general committees were then chaired by women. Härstedt was elected a vice-president until 2017. Her chairmanship ended when she left the delegation after the 2014 Swedish election. At the Bureau in Basel on 3 December 2014, president Ilkka Kanerva asked Wicker, who agreed, to fill the vacancy.

NATO Parliamentary Assembly

The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is a forum for parliamentarians from NATO countries and associated parliaments, not an organ of the Alliance. Co-operation developed from 1955 and took its present form in 1967–1968. It follows NATO’s agenda and meets each spring and autumn, in plenary and in five committees—defence and security, economics and security, political affairs, science and technology, and democracy and security—which draft reports and resolutions. The Riksdag’s delegation is appointed by the Speaker, after consultation with party group leaders, for four years and reports annually to the Speaker and to the foreign-affairs and defence committees.

The Riksdag took part from 1999 as an observer delegation and became an associate member in 2003, the status it held during Lindestam’s membership, from 28 October 2014 to 24 October 2018. Björn von Sydow chaired the delegation from 5 November 2014 to 24 September 2018, and the Moderate Karin Enström was vice-chair from 5 November 2014 to 24 October 2018. When Sweden was accepted as a NATO applicant in 2022 the delegation was given observer status, and on 7 March 2024, the day Sweden joined the Alliance, the Riksdag automatically became a full member of the Assembly.

Speakership contest and deputy speaker

The 2018 speaker election

The newly elected Riksdag met on 24 September 2018 and chose its Speaker by secret ballot. Anders Ygeman, for the Swedish Social Democratic Party, nominated Åsa Lindestam together with the Green Party and the Left Party. He invoked the practice that the Speaker came from the largest party, or from the largest party in the largest constellation, and said the four centre-right parties had refused cross-bloc talks and so depended on the Sweden Democrats.

Tobias Billström, for the Moderate Party, the Centre Party, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, nominated Andreas Norlén, a doctor of laws and lately chair of the Committee on the Constitution. Billström said the constitution did not fix the Speaker’s party, that no such practice was generally agreed, and that the four parties were the largest cohesive bloc. Both sides asked for a secret ballot.

The age president announced 203 votes for Norlén and 145 for Lindestam, and the chamber elected Norlén. Caroline Szyber had resigned with effect from that day and was absent, so 348 members voted. SVT reported that the Sweden Democrats had already said they would back the four-party candidate, and that Lindestam’s total was one above the 144 seats of the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left. The extra vote could not be traced because the ballot was secret. SVT called the decision to nominate without first consulting the other bloc a break with the practice of accepting a Speaker from the largest party in the bloc that was to form the government. Norlén said he would try to be the whole Riksdag’s Speaker even though he had not received every vote.

Ygeman then nominated Lindestam as first deputy speaker, and the chamber elected her by acclamation. The same afternoon Lotta Johnsson Fornarve of the Left Party was elected second deputy speaker, defeating the Sweden Democrats’ nominee Björn Söder on a third ballot by 149 votes to 82, with 117 blank ballots. Kerstin Lundgren of the Centre Party was elected third deputy speaker by 272 votes to Söder’s 69, with seven blanks.

First deputy speaker, 2018–2022

Under the Instrument of Government the Speaker consults a representative of every party group, confers with the deputy speakers and proposes a prime minister, naming the parties that are to govern. The Riksdag votes within four days. The proposal passes unless at least 175 members vote against it. Up to four proposals may be made; if all fail, an extraordinary election follows within three months. After an election the sitting prime minister also faces a mandatory vote. Deputy speakers may lead the chamber in the Speaker’s place and represent the Riksdag. Unlike the Speaker they may vote while presiding, but they may not join a debate they are chairing, and they otherwise sit as ordinary members. The presidium meets regularly on the conduct of the Riksdag’s work.

On 25 September the mandatory vote went against Stefan Löfven, 204 to 142, with three members absent. SVT called the decision historic. He stayed on at the head of a caretaker government while Norlén took over the talks. Lindestam told SVT that the Speaker had to meet the deputy speakers after each round with the party leaders, and that those meetings had been many.

On 15 January 2019, with the talks still open, she said she did not think it would have taken so long had she been Speaker, and that she would probably have pressed the parties a little harder. People worked in different ways, she added, and an agreement would still be welcome. She said her focus as deputy speaker was not party politics, but that she remained a Social Democratic member and had to keep the roles apart. Norlén, through his press secretary, declined to comment. On 18 January the Riksdag approved Löfven by 115 votes to 153, with 77 abstentions. The no votes—the Moderates, the Christian Democrats, the Sweden Democrats and one Centre member who broke the party line—stayed short of 175. SVT counted 131 days since the election of 9 September.

In April 2019 Lindestam led the Swedish delegation to the 140th assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Doha, Qatar, from 6 to 11 April. She gave Sweden’s main speech in the general debate on parliaments as a platform for education for peace, security and the rule of law, stressing gender equality and the link between education, peace and democracy. The visit also included a bilateral programme arranged by the Swedish embassy.

SVT reported in June 2021 that she would not stand again after the 2022 election. Her term as first deputy speaker ended on 26 September 2022, when the new Riksdag by acclamation elected Kenneth G. Forslund of the Social Democrats to succeed her.

Svenska Lottakåren

Svenska Lottakåren began on 10 September 1924 as Föreningen Stockholms Landstormskvinnor, founded by Tyra Wadner after she had met the Finnish women’s organisation Lotta Svärd, named for the sutler in Johan Ludvig Runeberg’s Fänrik Ståls sägner. The Swedish corps raised money for the landstorm, the older conscript classes, and supported its exercises; “lotta” was used at once, but the official name dates from 1943 and Svenska Lottakåren has been the public name since 2008. Membership reached 110,813 in 1943. Victoria has been patron since 2005, after Queen Louise (1927–1965), Princess Sibylla and Princess Christina.

The federation is one of 18 voluntary defence organisations in the ordinance on voluntary defence activity. The Swedish Armed Forces describe those organisations as recruiting and training volunteers for civil and military tasks in total defence. Lottakåren trains specialists such as field cooks and staff assistants for posts in the Armed Forces, with the Home Guard a particular route for women, and it teaches household preparedness for the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. The economic historian Fia Sundevall has said the movement long opposed gender-neutral universal conscription, because it was assumed to threaten recruitment and the rationale for a single-sex voluntary body. Membership is still limited to women, a rule argued inside the corps: in 2024 secretary-general Anna Nubäck told TT that a women-only structure could lower the threshold in a field where men had predominated.

The office of riksförbundets ordförande, distinct from the rikslottachef who chairs the överstyrelse, was introduced in 1974 so that the non-party federation would have direct contact with a woman member of the Riksdag’s Committee on Defence, and it is not tied to a party. On 21 November 2010 the riksstämma elected Åsa Lindestam, a Social Democratic member of the Riksdag, to succeed Eva Flyborg after 14 years; Lindestam called the corps a trained resource in crises and said it had handled communications when Swedes were stranded in Lebanon. Flyborg was a Gothenburg MP for the Liberals (then the Liberal People’s Party) and a substitute on the defence committee throughout her time in parliament. Lindestam kept the chair beside her Riksdag seat: when the Social Democrats nominated her for speaker in September 2018, she was reported as both federation chair and deputy chair of the defence committee.

Around 2000 the corps had about 20,000 members, and about a quarter of that twenty years later; during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden lottor were reported at mass vaccination and in errands such as collecting medicines and food. The federation’s own figures put membership at 4,542 in 2018, 4,569 in 2019, 4,551 in 2020 and 4,381 in 2021, then 5,938 in 82 corps at the end of 2022, after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February; Lindestam, of Söderhamns lottakår, remained chair through 12 November, and with courses running again the federation trained 345 students for the Armed Forces in leadership, catering, staff and intelligence (242 the year before) and 2,102 people on public preparedness courses (887). TT counted 640 new paying members within two weeks of the invasion, about a normal year’s intake, and 2,228 new members in 2022.

The 2022 congress, held digitally, adopted a strategy toward 2030 and on 12 November elected Alexandra Anstrell, a Moderate MP and member of the Committee on Defence, as federation chair, and Eva Nolsäter as rikslottachef in place of Heléne Rådemar; Lindestam and Rådemar became honorary members and received the royal gold merit medal.

Pensioners’ Riksorganisation

Taking the chair

On 18 June 2022, at its congress in Upplands Väsby, Pensionärernas riksorganisation (PRO) elected Åsa Lindestam chair. She was then the outgoing first deputy speaker of the Riksdag for the Swedish Social Democratic Party, and she succeeded Christina Tallberg, who had led PRO for seven years.

Åsa Lindestam after her election as chair of PRO at the 2022 congress in Upplands Väsby.

The nomination committee had proposed Lindestam, then 66 and a member from Gävleborg County. In a closed ballot she defeated the sitting first vice-chair, Jan Andersson, by 148 votes to 97, after delegates weighed his longer record in PRO against her cross-party work as deputy speaker. The congress treated PRO as party-politically unbound.

On 13 June 2026, at the 25th congress in Solna, about 150 delegates re-elected her unanimously for four more years. The nomination committee had put her forward, and there was no opposing candidate.

PRO, a pensioners’ organisation in Sweden, reported 258,480 paying members on 31 December 2024, in 26 districts and more than 1,000 associations, down 3,565 in a year. SPF Seniorerna reported 246,235 members at the end of 2025. SKPF Pensionärerna describes itself as the third-largest pensioners’ organisation, with about 155,000 members, and as politically and religiously unbound.

Pensions, care and preparedness

Lindestam has argued that the public pension neither prevents poverty, especially among older women living alone, nor rewards long working lives. In March 2026 she wrote that a full career in a low-paid job could yield about the same state pension as the guarantee pension, and that more of the employer fees already collected should go into the system. Citing SOM Institute data in a PRO report, she said only about a third of Swedes trusted the public pension. She called for a higher housing supplement, then paid to 305,000 pensioners, most of them women, and said the “gas” for surpluses would pay nothing in 2027 or 2028 because the threshold was too high.

On 26 September 2026, after the general election, she wrote in Svenska Dagbladet that the Pensionsgruppen should be wound up. Since 2023 the group has included all eight Riksdag parties and decides by consensus under the minister for older people and social insurance. She called that rule “vill minst-ism”: any party can block a change behind closed doors, so campaign promises stall. She wanted a new government to aim for no poor pensioners by 2030, a substantially higher general pension, and decisions by ordinary parliamentary majority.

The government of Ulf Kristersson has kept changes inside the group. On 18 June 2026, after the group had agreed, it set up an inquiry (Dir. 2026:57) to report by 1 March 2028 on a simpler basic protection: the guarantee pension, housing supplements, elderly maintenance support and the income-pension supplement. The terms of reference ask for better targeting against poverty and stronger incentives to work and to delay retirement. Anna Tenje of the Moderate Party, who chairs the group, called eight-party agreement a condition for lasting pensions. On 16 May 2026 she told Svenska Dagbladet that an eight-party group was envied abroad and that higher pensions required longer working lives. The Left Party’s Ida Gabrielsson said the group had still not delivered substantially higher or fairer pensions.

Magdalena Andersson told the Solna congress that an “arbetarpension” mattered. The Social Democrats said they would seek higher contributions inside the Pensionsgruppen, and also a means-tested benefit so that people who cannot work up to the target retirement age need not draw down pension capital early. Timbro’s Rutger Brattström replied that consensus exists so a simple majority cannot rewrite the system after each election, and that higher pensions now would transfer money from younger contributors. He preferred a larger premium-pension share.

On 18 January 2026 she wrote in Aftonbladet that elderly care should be a main election theme. Nearly three in ten of almost 21,000 PRO members surveyed said care worked poorly, and she cited National Board of Health and Welfare figures showing satisfaction with home care and care homes down 4.2 points from 2013 to 2025. PRO asked for at least 10 billion kronor a year from the state, compulsory pensioners’ councils, and support for a United Nations convention on older people’s rights.

In May 2026 she argued that preparedness which omits frail older people is a structural weakness. PRO’s report Pensionärerna och beredskapen called for every eldercare provider to plan and practise, for municipalities to cover care homes and home help, for shelters usable by people with disabilities, and for public-service broadcasters to carry crisis information. She wrote that the early-1980s law on paying pensions in wartime was obsolete and, on the authorities’ own account, unusable.

Personal life and honours

Family

Lindestam is married to Sven-Erik Lindestam, a Social Democrat who for eight years was chair of the municipal executive board in Söderhamn. He left that post at the turn of 2018–2019, after the party could no longer form a majority; SVT reported that he was then expected to become chair of the municipal auditors, a post the municipality later listed him as holding. A profile in PROpensionären in October 2022 described him as her husband and partner of twenty years, and as the Social Democratic municipal commissioner who had stepped down after the 2018 election; it placed the couple’s home in Söderhamn and a holiday house, used by her since childhood, at Inre Norrfjärden in the Söderhamn archipelago, where grandchildren were visiting.

Honours

On 6 June 2024 Carl XVI Gustaf conferred H.M. the King’s Medal in gold of the 12th size, with the ribbon of the Order of the Seraphim, on Lindestam for meritorious political service (framstående politikergärning). The Royal Court styled her as former first deputy speaker of the Riksdag and named her as one of four recipients of that grade, with the former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Peter Englund, Professor Göran K. Hansson, and Ambassador Fredrik Löjdquist.

The King’s Medal has been awarded since 1800. From 1975 it has gone to Swedish citizens for particular services; until then it was the Court Medal (Hovmedaljen), given mainly for service at court. The 12th size is 43 mm across, and in gold with the Seraphim ribbon it is worn by women at the left shoulder. The King normally presents the medals, and the Queen the letters, about a week after the 28 January and 6 June announcements, usually since 2009 in Lovisa Ulrika’s dining room at Stockholm Palace.

That room was used on 13 June 2024, when the King presented the medals conferred on 6 June. Queen Silvia took part; a court photograph from the day shows her handing a diploma to one recipient. Before the ceremony Lindestam told PROpensionären that she felt greatly honoured and had been asked to give the speech of thanks. Söderhamns-Kuriren reported that she would deliver it, and quoted her saying she had not expected the honour.

At Svenska Lottakåren’s digital national assembly on 12 November 2022, Lindestam, the outgoing federal chair, received the organisation’s highest distinction, the merit medal in royal gold (förtjänstmedalj i kungligt guld), together with the outgoing national commander Heléne Rådemar. Both were also elected honorary members, and the former national commander Marianne af Malmborg presented the awards.