# Ingegerd Troedsson

# Ingegerd Troedsson

Ingegerd Troedsson (née Cederlöf; 5 June 1929 – 3 November 2012) was a Swedish Moderate Party politician and the first woman to serve as Speaker of the Riksdag, holding the office from 1991 to 1994. She was a member of the Riksdag for Uppsala County from 1974 to 1994, a minister at the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs from 8 October 1976 to 18 October 1978, and first deputy speaker from 1979 to 1991. The health portfolio had previously sat inside the wider social-affairs brief; the biographical dictionary of Swedish women describes her as Sweden's first minister for health.

She was born in Stockholm on 5 June 1929, the daughter of Colonel Emil Cederlöf and Gerd Cederlöf, née Wibom. Her father's postings took the family through Solna, Vaxholm and Visby before she finished school. She took the studentexamen at Saltsjöbaden in 1947, a filosofie kandidat at Stockholm University College — later Stockholm University — in 1951, and a politices magister in 1952.

In 1949, while still a student, she married Tryggve Troedsson, who became a professor of forestry. The couple had six children, five of whom reached adulthood. From 1957 they lived at the Hakesta farm near Grillby, where she spent about fifteen years caring for the children, repairing the old buildings and writing for local and national newspapers. She regarded paid work outside the home as financially pointless under the tax rules then in force, and family taxation remained her central political subject. She joined the Right Party, predecessor of the Moderates, in 1954, set up its women's association in Norra Trögd, and sat on the municipal councils of Norra Trögd from 1959 to 1970 and of Enköping from 1971 to 1976.

After the non-socialist victory of 1976 she entered [Thorbjörn Fälldin](/people/thorbjorn-falldin)'s first government, with responsibility for health care, until that cabinet resigned two years later. When [Ulf Adelsohn](/people/ulf-adelsohn) left the party leadership in 1986, a more conservative current put her forward against [Carl Bildt](/people/carl-bildt); the nomination committee proposed Bildt, she withdrew rather than force a split, and the party elected her second vice-chair, a post the Riksdag's own biography dates from 1986 to 1991.

On 30 September 1991 the newly elected Riksdag chose her as Speaker by secret ballot, 184 votes to 150 for the sitting Speaker, the Social Democrat Thage G. Peterson, with one ballot ruled invalid. In the chair of the parliamentary administration and of the Riksdag inquiry she pressed for a calendar-year state budget, in line with other European Union states, and for rules on how the chamber would work after Swedish membership. She left the Riksdag in 1994. In December 2006 she told reporters she had already stopped paying Moderate dues a year earlier, because she thought the party had dropped its old aim of "skatt efter bärkraft" — tax according to ability to pay — and she called herself generally bourgeois rather than a party member. She died at Hakesta on 3 November 2012, aged 83, and is buried in Hacksta cemetery.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and family of origin

Ingegerd Troedsson was born Ingegerd Cederlöf on 5 June 1929 in Engelbrekt Parish, Stockholm. Her father was Emil Johan Cederlöf, an officer who rose to colonel, born in Stockholm on 11 September 1891, and her mother was Gerd Cederlöf, née Wibom, born on 10 November 1899. Emil was the son of Otto Cederlöf and Carolina, née Hult. Gerd was the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Axel Wibom and Thyra, née Amundson; she and Emil married in 1927. Gerd died on 23 September 1966 and Emil on 9 January 1981.

The couple had three children. Besides Ingegerd they were Sven Cederlöf, born on 28 September 1930, a physician who died on 15 October 1983, and Birgitta Cederlöf, born on 7 June 1932 and later married Ingvar-Nilsson, who trained as an agronomist. Because Emil was a serving officer, his wife and the three children moved with his postings, and Ingegerd grew up in the Stockholm area. The same biographical register places the household in Solna from 1929 and in Vaxholm, and records time in Visby on Gotland in the 1940s.

Emil was commissioned as an *underlöjtnant* in the Swedish Coastal Artillery in 1912, became a major in 1935 and a lieutenant colonel in 1940, and in 1941 was promoted to colonel and given command of KA 3, the Gotland coastal artillery corps, together with the Gotland coastal artillery defence. From 1935 he was an aide-de-camp to King Gustaf V, and from 1941 a senior aide-de-camp. The 1947 *Sveriges statskalender* still listed him as commander of the Gotland coastal artillery defence and the Gotland coastal artillery corps, and as senior aide-de-camp to the king. From 1947 to 1951 he commanded KA 1. A contemporary reference work identifies KA 1 as the Vaxholm Coastal Artillery Regiment, part of the Stockholm coastal artillery defence, with barracks on Rindö. Those commands line up with the Stockholm-area and Gotland places recorded for his daughter’s childhood.

### Schooling and university

She took the *studentexamen*, the Swedish school-leaving examination, in 1947 at the *läroverk* in Saltsjöbaden. She then attended Engelbrekts Barnavårds- och Husmodersskola in Stockholm, a school of childcare and household management, which the same register dates to 1947–1948. The Riksdag biography she later supplied records only the *studentexamen* of 1947, without naming the school.

From 1948 she studied at Stockholms högskola, the college later raised to Stockholm University. In the curriculum vitae printed by the Riksdag from information she gave to *Fakta om folkvalda*, she listed a *filosofie kandidat* at Stockholms högskola in 1951 and a *politices magister* in 1952. *Vem är det* likewise gives “Pol. mag. Sthlm 52”. The Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon describes that degree as a master’s degree in political science. The sequence was short: the leaving examination in Saltsjöbaden, a year at the childcare and homemaking school, and then the *filosofie kandidat* and the *politices magister* within about four years at the högskola.

## Marriage and the years at Hakesta

### Marriage and children

In 1949, at the age of twenty and while she was still a student, Ingegerd Cederlöf married Tryggve Bengt Johan Troedsson. He was born in Lund on 14 May 1923 and died at Hakesta on 10 September 2010. In the year of the marriage he became an assistant in forest soil science at Skogshögskolan in Stockholm, and in 1957 he was appointed professor of *skoglig marklära*; he later led the subject at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. She took a *filosofie kandidat* at Stockholms högskola in 1951 and a *politices magister* in 1952. An obituary places their first child shortly before that degree, and five further births over the following decade.

They had six children, five of whom reached adulthood. The register names those five: Vigg, born on 15 September 1950, later an economist and company director; Susanne, born on 7 March 1954 and later married Löwnerz, a public-administration lawyer; Viveca, born on 10 June 1956 and later married Ehrning, an economist and head of adult education; Ulf, born on 14 March 1959, a crafts teacher; and Eric, born on 23 March 1963, later chief executive of Siemens in Sweden.

### Hakesta

In 1957 the family moved to Hakesta gård near Grillby in Uppland, and she lived there until her death. Her chronicle of the place, issued from Grillby in 1995, treats Hakesta and Hacksta church village as lying in Hacksta parish, in the hundred of Trögd. The curriculum vitae she gave the Riksdag lists Grillby as her residence.

### Household work and the tax system

For about fifteen years after the move, while the children were small, she stayed at home, repaired the farm’s many old buildings and wrote for the local and national press, work dated to 1957–1972. She later called the period, with pride, “fifteen years as a housewife.”

For most of those years spouses were jointly assessed for income tax. From 1908 each spouse was assessed for the income he or she controlled, the incomes were added together, tax was calculated on the sum and then divided in proportion to each income. From 1952 a splitting rule (*tudelningsprincipen*) divided that combined income into two equal parts, which favoured marriage at smaller and middle incomes; at higher incomes the disadvantage of adding the incomes together was left in place. A 1959 official inquiry found that the extra tax when a married woman took paid work was in principle the same as when the husband earned the same additional sum, because tax was computed on the joint income, and that joint assessment could therefore dampen a married woman’s willingness to take a job. From 1965 earned income could be taxed separately if the couple applied; capital and other non-earned income could not.

Individual taxation of earned income became the general rule on 1 January 1971, replacing separate state scales for single people without children and for married people and single parents with one scale. The bill stated that joint assessment belonged to an earlier labour market, which had given married women limited chances to earn, and that the dependent position it imposed should no longer be accepted: a wife returning to paid work would receive a tax-free allowance as large as her husband’s, and her tax would no longer depend on his income. Her own conclusion from the Hakesta years was that work outside the home was financially pointless because of joint taxation and the high marginal effects, and family policy became one of her main political interests.

## Local politics and the women's association

### Norra Trögd and Enköping

Ingegerd Troedsson joined Högerpartiet in 1954. At its congress at the beginning of January 1969 the party took the name Moderata samlingspartiet; Yngve Holmberg told the second chamber that the change left the party's policy unaltered.

Her entry in *Fakta om folkvalda*, as published by the Riksdag, lists a seat on Norra Trögd municipal council from 1959 to 1970, on the pensions board from 1960 to 1963, on the school board from 1961 to 1970 and on the insurance board from 1962 to 1965. *Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon* dates the same local political work more broadly, from 1958 to 1971. On 1 January 1971 Norra Trögd was absorbed into Enköping Municipality in Uppsala County, with Åsunda, Södra Trögd and Lagunda; Fjärdhundra was moved from Västmanland County into the same municipality. She sat on Enköping council from 1971 to 1976, on the social welfare board (*sociala centralnämnden*) for the whole period and as its vice-chair in 1971–1973, and on the nominating committee (*valberedningen*) in 1973–1976, chairing it in 1973. The same account places her on the board of Kungsgärdet Hospital in Uppsala, as vice-chair and as chair, from 1966 to 1973.

### The Moderate women's organization

The lexicon's article states that in 1954 she founded Högerns kvinnoförening in Norra Trögd and remained its chair until 1991. Her Riksdag biography dates the chairmanship to 1962–1991, and the lexicon's organization record gives the same years for the combined roles of founder, member and chair.

In 1963 Högerns kvinnoförbund set up a five-member *aktivitetskommitté*. Troedsson pressed family policy and elder care—freedom of choice, nursing homes and qualified nurse training—and environmental questions: clean air, water and farmland, and the effects of chemicals and pesticides on food, with proposals for laws against [air pollution](/drivers/air-pollution) and for control of groundwater and pesticides. The lexicon says the committee's work was taken up in the federation's associations and later supplied material for motions locally and in the Riksdag.

The Riksdag biography lists her as vice-chair of the national women's federation in 1969–1975, chair of the Uppsala County women's federation in 1972–1977, and a member of the party board in 1965–1975 and again in 1978–1991. The lexicon's organization data differ: second vice-chair of the national federation in 1965–1972, vice-chair rather than chair of the county women's organization in 1972–1977, and party-board service in 1965–1976.

### Early pamphlets and speaking

The lexicon describes her as a journalist, columnist and lecturer at Hakesta from 1957 to 1972, and as widely known throughout Sweden as a speaker on social questions. In 1962 Högerns ungdomsförbund published *Hög tid för ny familjepolitik: tre debattinlägg*, by Gunnar Hillerdal, Troedsson and Nils G. Hansson; the lexicon prints the title with an added "en". In *Svensk Tidskrift* in 1979 she wrote that the pamphlet had sought tax according to ability to pay, counting how many people an income supported, parents' free choice between home and paid work and between forms of childcare, and pension rights calculated on childcare.

*Aktiv vårdpolitik* (1966), 52 pages, was issued under her name by Bokförlaget Medborgarskolan in Uppsala. The lexicon also lists *Vårdkris* (1966), which is not catalogued as a separate work under her name, and counts *Att få ta ansvar* (1967) and *Politik för 70-talet* (1969) among writings of her own or with others. The 1967 item is a 48-page pamphlet from the federation's *aktivitetskommitté*; the 1969 title in the national catalogue is a study pamphlet for [Moderate Party](/organizations/moderate-party) circles, with no individual author named.

## Family policy and taxation

### Ability-to-pay taxation

Troedsson's standing formula was *skatt efter bärkraft*: tax according to capacity to pay, counted by how many people had to live on an income rather than by the wage alone. In the women's organization of Högerpartiet, later the Moderate Party, she drafted in the early 1960s a scheme that treated the family as one economic unit—joint assessment with income-splitting, a *barnortsavdrag* (a local allowance scaled to children), and a deduction for care while the parents worked. She later described it as child deductions and deductions for documented childcare costs, a cash allowance only where income was too low to use a deduction, and pension points for mothers of small children at home.

The 1970 reform taxed earned income individually. The Family Economics Committee later noted that a "housewife reduction" was added to soften that change, and that the general child allowance of 1947 had replaced a child deduction because a deduction was worth more at a higher marginal rate. In a 1976 Riksdag motion Troedsson and other Moderates calculated that, under proposed subsistence-minimum rules and with one earner, a three-child family would face a marginal rate of 100 per cent from about 31,000 to 48,000 kronor a year, and larger families over wider bands. Her reservation to *Barn kostar...* (SOU 1983:14) opposed any further retreat from *bärkraft* and called for a tax under which families paying tax would not also need means-tested benefits. A 1986 motion put the result in one line: because tax ignored capacity to pay, families with good incomes and high taxes could still fall short of a reasonable standard of living.

### Childcare, benefits and choice

The arithmetic was also an argument about care. Troedsson held that high taxes narrowed the choice between paid work and care at home, and that day nurseries created an artificial demand for places. A different line was already associated with Alva Myrdal: in *Kris i befolkningsfrågan* (1934), she and Gunnar Myrdal proposed publicly organized nursery schools both to improve children's surroundings and to make paid work easier for housewives.

A cash care allowance was not her starting point. A 2012 obituary in *Fokus* records that the Right Party of the 1960s had called an allowance for parents at home a "socialization of the family", and that such an allowance later became the lowest common denominator of difficult non-socialist cooperation, even while Troedsson kept the preference for lower taxes over benefits and day nurseries. She nevertheless moved the instrument. A 1981 Moderate motion in her name proposed an untaxed *vårdnadsbidrag* of 400 kronor a month for every child aged one to three, usable as household income, as pay for private care, or toward more market-like municipal fees. In the 1983 committee she refused to make further municipal expansion a priority, arguing that the apparent shortage assumed other forms of care would stay disadvantaged, and proposed a tax-free payment of 6,000 kronor a year for those ages, offset by higher parental fees, at a net cost of about 700 million kronor.

The national compromise came under Carl Bildt. Proposition 1993/94:148 offered 2,000 kronor a month for a child aged one to three outside publicly financed childcare, less for a part-time place and nothing above 30 hours a week, taxed as earnings. After the 1994 election the [Swedish Social Democratic Party](/organizations/swedish-social-democratic-party) government proposed repeal from 1 January 1995.

### Inquiries and later books

Her Riksdag biography lists the inquiries that touched the field: the Social Welfare Inquiry (1968–1976), the Family Economics Committee (1979–1983), the Housing Allowance Committee (1979–1982), the committee on deficit deductions (1980–1983), the 1983 Population Registration Committee (1983–1988), a 1983 inquiry on differentiated value-added tax, the Pension Commission (1985–1990) and the 1991 review of the Social Services Act. She was also an expert on the 1976 tax-equalization inquiry, a matter of municipal finance rather than family tax. In *Barn kostar...* her dissent added a minimum-standard guarantee for families with small children, and argued that rules favouring municipal care helped to produce the shortage they were said to cure.

The books restated the case after she left day-to-day politics: *Variation och valfrihet – för barnens bästa* (1984), *Den kommenderade familjen* (1999) and *Frigör familjen* (2001). *Den kommenderade familjen* carries the subtitle "30 år med Alva Myrdals familjepolitik" and takes Myrdal's 1969 equality report as the start of state direction of family life; the 2004 essay "Vad hände sedan?" calls itself an attempt to describe the passage from freedom of choice to state-directed "equality".

## The Riksdag and the Ministry of Health

### Member for Uppsala County

Ingegerd Troedsson sat in the Riksdag for Uppsala County for the Moderate Party (Moderata samlingspartiet). The biography on her member page, drawn from *Fakta om folkvalda*, records her as a member (*Rdl*) from 1974 to 1994. The page's appointment register is narrower: ordinary member (*ordinarie*) from 3 October 1976 to 29 September 1991, and on leave (*ledig*) from 29 September 1991 to 2 October 1994.

The leave matches her term as Speaker of the Riksdag. Chapter 4, Section 13 of the 1974 Instrument of Government states that while a member is Speaker, or belongs to the government, a substitute exercises the mandate, so the Speaker does not cast an ordinary chamber vote. The same rule covered her years as a minister, although the register does not mark 1976–1978 as leave. The line "Rdl 1974–1994" still fits: she remained the elected member, and a substitute sat when the constitution required it. Outside government she was a deputy on the social affairs committee for 1974 through 1975/76, in 1978/79 and from 1988/89 through 1990/91, and on the social insurance committee in 1985/86–1986/87.

### Minister for health, 1976–1978

From 8 October 1976 to 18 October 1978 Troedsson was a minister (*statsråd*) at the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs in the first cabinet of Prime Minister Thorbjörn Fälldin, a coalition of the Centre Party, the Moderates and the Liberals (then Folkpartiet). She was not head of the ministry. The appointment was that of the minister responsible for health and medical care, in Swedish usage a *sjukvårdsminister* or *biträdande socialminister*. *Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon* describes her as the first minister for whom health care was a remit of its own, rather than a part of the social minister's portfolio.

In *Svensk Tidskrift* at the end of 1977 she wrote that planning should start from the patient. From the government declaration she listed seven priorities: prevention, self-care (*egenvård*), care closer to where people lived, a "family doctor" arrangement, more room for non-public providers, more home care, and better nursing. She argued for a stronger district-nurse service, including limited prescribing and certain certificates, and for pharmacies to do more to inform the public about medicines.

During the three-party government three inquiries were set up on the supply of medicines, on control, on information and on prices. The medicines-control inquiry, called in the autumn of 1977, proposed a separate authority, *statens läkemedelsverk*; that step was not taken before the cabinet left office. The Medical Products Agency (Läkemedelsverket) was established only on 1 July 1990, from the medicines department of the National Board of Health and Welfare. In January 1979 Troedsson and other Moderates criticized the successor government for legislating only fragments of the inquiry and again urged a separate agency. Medicine information and the retail monopoly of Apoteket were disputed at the time; the monopoly was not removed while she was minister.

The same biographical account states that she was the first Swedish minister to take part in the work of the World Health Organization. In 1978, the year her ministerial term ended, the government, the Federation of County Councils (Landstingsförbundet), the Swedish Export Council and representatives of the health-care industry set up the Swecare foundation, a non-profit body for international contacts and the promotion of Swedish health-care exports.

On 5 October 1978 Fälldin asked the Speaker to dismiss him, and the Speaker dismissed the ministers the same day; under the Instrument of Government they stayed in office until a successor took over, and Troedsson's recorded term runs to 18 October 1978. That day the government also refused, under the 1977 act on permission to load a reactor, to authorize fuel for Ringhals 3 and Forsmark 1, finding the statutory conditions unmet. The three-party coalition is described as having broken, after two years, over nuclear power. The Speaker then proposed the Liberal [Ola Ullsten](/people/ola-ullsten) as prime minister of a single-party government.

### Auditors, tax authority and the Riksbank

Out of government, she again exercised her own seat. For the sessions 1979/80 to 1981/82 she was a member and the chair of the Riksdag's auditors (Riksdagens revisorer). From 1979 to 1988 she sat on the board of Riksskatteverket, the national tax board later succeeded by the Swedish Tax Agency. In 1982/83–1984/85 she was a member of the General Council (Riksbanksfullmäktige) of [Sveriges Riksbank](/organizations/sveriges-riksbank), the council the Riksdag appoints for the central bank. She was a full member of the Riksdag's tax committee in 1979/80–1984/85 and again in 1987/88, and a deputy member in 1974 through 1975/76, in 1978/79, in 1985/86–1986/87 and in 1988/89–1990/91.

## Deputy speaker and the 1986 leadership contest

### Twelve years as first deputy speaker

Ingegerd Troedsson was first deputy speaker (*förste vice talman*) of the Riksdag from the session of 1979/80 through 1990/91. The notice she gave to *Fakta om folkvalda* also dates the office 1979–1991, and places her from 1979/80 on the Talmanskonferensen and the Krigsdelegationen; she chaired both only in 1991/92–1993/94, after becoming Speaker of the Riksdag. Under the Riksdag Act then in force, the Speaker’s conference comprised the Speaker, the deputy speakers, a representative of each party group above the four-per-cent threshold, the committee chairs and the vice-chair of the administrative board, and it considered how to keep business orderly, including longer recesses. The war delegation, the Speaker together with 50 members, can exercise the Riksdag’s powers in war or in danger of war.

In the Moderate Party parliamentary group she sat on its executive council, the *förtroenderåd*, from 1979/80 to 1990/91, as third vice-chair in 1981/82–1984/85 and as second vice-chair in 1985/86–1990/91. A 2012 obituary in *Fokus* recalled that, before a long and complicated division, it was assumed she would complete the vote as quickly and efficiently as possible.

### The contest with Carl Bildt

At the 1985 election the Moderates’ share of the vote fell from 23.6 per cent in 1982 to 21.3 per cent. Ulf Adelsohn wanted to resign as party leader. At the party-leader debate on 5 June 1986, the Liberal leader Bengt Westerberg said that the sitting was, in all appearance, Adelsohn’s last debate in his then role in the chamber.

Troedsson was born on 5 June 1929 and was 57 that summer. *Fokus* described her as the candidate of a more conservative faction, taking up the challenge more from loyalty to the party than from any fierce wish to win, and recorded that the nomination committee proposed Carl Bildt, then 37. Ann-Cathrine Haglund, chair of Moderata kvinnoförbundet, later wrote that the federation had thought it obvious to propose Troedsson and had campaigned for her; that Troedsson, judging Bildt’s support the stronger, withdrew so as not to force a fight at the congress and then became second vice-chair; and that Bildt afterwards told her it would have been “närmast tjänstefel”, close to a dereliction of duty, had the federation not pressed Troedsson’s name. Peter Egardt, head of the Moderate parliamentary secretariat from 1981 to 1991, argued for Bildt among district representatives that summer and later cast the choice as proved experience against youth, and as a more traditional conservatism, with family policy at its centre, against a less tested liberal line associated with Gösta Bohman’s stress on the individual and on freedom.

On 23 August 1986 Bildt addressed the Moderate party congress as party leader. In diary memoirs quoted by *Fokus*, Adelsohn wrote of her conduct: “Lojalt och tjusigt. Hon är en härligt juste och rak person” (“Loyal and graceful. She is a wonderfully decent and straightforward person”).

### Second vice-chair of the party

Her submission to *Fakta om folkvalda* dates the second vice-chairmanship of the party board (*andre vice partiordförande*) to 1986–1991, within board membership in 1965–1975 and again in 1978–1991. Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon gives 1987–1991. The biographical appendix of the 2014 memorial volume *Moderat med klubba, grep och penna*, compiled by Ann-Marie Petersson, also gives 1987–1991, and a caption there names the presidium elected at that year’s party congress as Bildt, Lars Tobisson as first vice-chair and Troedsson as second vice-chair; a contributor’s recollection in the same volume that the post lasted until 1993 is not supported by the appendix or by the Riksdag biography.

## Speaker of the Riksdag

### The 1991 election of the Speaker

On 30 September 1991, at the first sitting of the Riksdag elected on 15 September, the chamber chose Ingegerd Troedsson of the Moderate Party as Speaker. In a secret ballot she received 184 votes, the sitting Speaker Thage G. Peterson 150, and one ballot was invalid. She was the first woman in the office. With the age president, Stig Alemyr, presiding, Lars Tobisson nominated her for the Moderates. He cited twelve years as first deputy speaker and the argument, previously made by Thorbjörn Fälldin, that a non-socialist majority should be reflected in the speakership because of the Speaker's constitutional role in forming a government, and he asked for a secret ballot rather than acclamation.

Jan Bergqvist, for the [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats), proposed re-electing Peterson. He argued against politicizing the office: no sitting Speaker had been replaced merely because an election had changed the majority, and since 1974 the Speaker proposes a prime minister, may act as regent, and neither debates nor votes, a substitute exercising the seat. Lars Werner said the Left Party would support Peterson, as the largest party's nominee. Birgit Friggebo for the Liberals, Gunnar Björk for the Centre Party and [Mats Odell](/people/mats-odell) for the [Christian Democrats](/organizations/christian-democrats) supported Troedsson. [Ian Wachtmeister](/people/ian-wachtmeister), for [New Democracy](/organizations/new-democracy), said his group would have preferred a Speaker without a party label, and that Peterson would have been a strong candidate on personal merits, but nominated Troedsson.

The protocol does not divide the secret ballot by party. Of 349 seats the Moderates held 80, [the Liberals](/organizations/the-liberals) 33, the Centre Party 31 and the Christian Democrats 26 — 170 in all, short of half the chamber — while New Democracy held 25. Troedsson's 184 votes therefore exceeded what those four parties could cast alone. A memorial in *Fokus* later described the result as uncertain until it was clear that New Democracy too had voted for her. In all, 335 ballots were cast. Lennart Hedquist was named to exercise her seat for as long as she was Speaker.

On 1 October, after [Ingvar Carlsson](/people/ingvar-carlsson) had asked on 16 September to be discharged, she proposed Carl Bildt as prime minister of a government of Moderates, Liberals, the Centre Party and Christian Democrats. On 3 October the Riksdag approved him by 163 votes to 147, with 23 abstentions. Wachtmeister said New Democracy had unanimously decided to abstain until it had seen a programme it thought forceful enough.

### Budget procedure and preparations for the European Union

From October 1991 Troedsson chaired the Riksdag Inquiry (Riksdagsutredningen), set up by the Speaker's Conference on 17 October 1990; Peterson had chaired it until September 1991. Its June 1993 report, *Reformera riksdagsarbetet!*, proposed a calendar-year budget from 1997, in place of the year running from 1 July to 30 June, an autumn budget, and a first decision on expenditure frames. One advantage it set out was coordination with the European Community. Margit Gennser and Daniel Tarschys dissented, treating a move of election day to early summer as a condition of the change.

On 15 December 1993 the Speaker's Conference, in a submission signed by Troedsson, sent the constitutional proposals to the Riksdag and said work would continue on a parliamentary body for European integration. Sweden had applied to join the Community on 1 July 1991; a referendum on 13 November 1994 approved accession, and Sweden entered the European Union on 1 January 1995. The Constitutional Committee, in report 1993/94:KU18, endorsed the calendar-year change, and the Riksdag decided that report on 7 June 1994. The Swedish Women's Biographical Dictionary also credits her, as chair of the inquiry and of the Riksdag Board (Riksdagens förvaltningsstyrelse), with quicker exchanges of reply in debate.

In office the Speaker chairs the War Delegation, which can replace the Riksdag in war or danger of war, and is a member, not the chair, of the Advisory Council on [Foreign Affairs](/organizations/foreign-affairs), which the monarch presides over.

### The Baltic states and foreign visits

In January 1991, while she was still first deputy speaker, Troedsson joined a Riksdag delegation to Riga during the Soviet crackdown in the Baltic republics. On 23 January she and the third deputy speaker, Bertil Fiskesjö, met [Anatolijs Gorbunovs](/people/anatolijs-gorbunovs), chairman of the Supreme Council of Latvia. Troedsson asked how an independence referendum might be held, given the different forms used in Lithuania and Estonia. Gorbunovs said the [Latvian parliament](/organizations/latvian-parliament) had not yet discussed it.

As Speaker, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, she took an active part in parliamentary contacts, above all with the Baltic states. The biographical lexicon lists Mikhail Gorbachev, Hanan Ashrawi, Yasser Arafat and [Jacques Delors](/people/jacques-delors) among guests received at the Riksdag, and records that she visited the [United Nations](/organizations/united-nations) and the [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe](/organizations/organization-for-security-and-co-operation-in-europe) and led a delegation to Australia.

### The close of the 1991–1994 Riksdag

She remained Speaker through the sessions of 1991/92 to 1993/94. The day after the [1994 election](/facts/1994-swedish-general-election) of 18 September, Bildt asked to be discharged, and he and the other ministers were discharged the same day. On 3 October the new Riksdag, with Carlsson as age president, elected Birgitta Dahl Speaker by acclamation on Sven Hulterström's nomination. On 4 October Dahl recalled the discharge of 19 September and, after consulting the party groups and the deputy speakers, proposed Carlsson as prime minister of a Social Democratic government. *Fokus* described Troedsson's last duty as receiving Bildt's resignation and preparing Carlsson's return, and recorded the judgement on her conduct as "utmärkt och mönstergillt" ("excellent and exemplary"). A full-length portrait of her was added to the Riksdag's row of Speakers.

## Boards, foundations and honours

### Company and agency boards

The outside posts Ingegerd Troedsson held while in parliament are those she reported to *Fakta om folkvalda*, reproduced in her Riksdag biography. From 1979 to 1991 she was a director of Industri AB Euroc, formed in 1973 as parent of the cement producer Cementa after Cementa bought Gullhögen. From 1980 to 1986 she sat on the board of AB Skandinaviska Elverk, founded in 1902 to run power stations that ASEA owned in towns in central and southern Sweden, and the same return lists the Vegete insurance companies for 1981–1986 and the life insurer Wasa Liv for 1987–1991.

Her link with [Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken](/organizations/seb-group) was not a seat on the bank's board. She recorded herself as vice chair, from 1980 to 1987, of its council for economic and social questions, an advisory body of academics, industrialists and officials, and the 1980 annual report names her, then first deputy speaker, as one of two vice chairs under Torgny T:son Segerstedt. Members of the bank's own board joined the council's discussions, a different role; *Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon* later lists the bank among her boards without that distinction.

In public administration she was a member of the board of Statens lantmäteriverk, the national land-survey authority, in 1974–1976, and of Riksskatteverket, the central tax authority, from 1979 to 1988. From 1988 to 1991 she sat on the consistory of Uppsala University, the university's highest decision-making body.

### Cancer funds and cultural bodies

From 1987 she was a board member of Konung Gustaf V:s jubileumsfond, a foundation for cancer research, and from 1994 its chair. The lexicon also records that she chaired Stiftelsen Cancercentrum Karolinska and took part in setting it up. That foundation's stated object is to promote experimental cancer research with Karolinska Hospital and the Karolinska Institute, and to own a building in which laboratories and teaching rooms are let for that work.

She was a director of Svenska Dagbladets stiftelse from 1981 to 1994. In 1940 the foundation took over [*Svenska Dagbladet*](/organizations/svenska-dagbladet) in order to keep the newspaper independent of particular economic interests and to prevent changes of ownership. From 1985 to 1991 she sat on the board of Confidencen, the rococo theatre in the park of Ulriksdal Palace, named for a dining room in which the table could be lowered so guests could talk without servants present. As Speaker of the Riksdag she chaired Stiftelsen Sveriges Nationaldag from 1991 to 1994. The county governors are the foundation's principals, the statutes make the Speaker its chair, and its task is to encourage observance of the National Day of Sweden and respect for the Swedish flag.

### Decorations

In June 1994, as her term as Speaker ended, she received H.M. the King's Medal in gold of the 12th size, a decoration instituted in 1813 and since 1975 conferred by King [Carl XVI Gustaf](/people/carl-xvi-gustaf) on Swedish citizens for particular services. The same year the County Administrative Board of Uppsala named her and Birgitta Dahl Årets upplänningar, the county honour Årets Hedersupplänning, for combining national office with commitment to their home district.

## Historical writing

### Hakesta, Enköping and Gestilren

She had already printed local chronicles before leaving the speakership, including a Resele study (1985) and, in 1992–93, chronicles of Hufvudsta and of Söfringsbo in Garpenberg.

After 1994 the Grillby imprints multiplied. In 1995 she published the two-volume *Hakesta och Hacksta kyrkby i Hacksta socken i Trögds härad: från äldsta tider fram till i dag: en krönika*, on the farm and Hacksta Church village where she had lived since 1957; a further Hacksta study, of Fjälby, followed in 2005. *[Mina](/people/mina) fantastiska anmödrar: en krönika* (1996), listed in her Riksdag biography, follows her female ancestors, and *Från Mats i Nor fram till i dag* (1998) traces *bergsman* lines from Nor in Söderbärke, Dalarna.

With Thore Gryse, Hans Kobbe and Sven Sandblom she produced *Historia om Enköpingsbygden: saga och sanning: från forntid till nutid*, on the Enköping district. The National Library catalogues a 2006 edition and revised editions in 2007 and 2011, each of 352 pages; the biographical lexicon calls her the editor.

A separate project treated the Battle of Gestilren. In 2009 Enköpings kommuns kulturförvaltning published *Striden i Gestilren 1210: varför? vad hände? och sen då?*, 280 illustrated pages, with Troedsson as editor and Sven Sandblom as assistant editor. Its eight contributors argued that the fight in which Sverker the Younger was killed, and Erik Knutsson’s side prevailed, was fought at Gästre in Frösthult, north of Enköping in Uppland, not between Dala and Lena in Västergötland, where a monument had stood since 1910. In November 2010 Troedsson and co-authors received the new prize Årets uppländska bok. The biographical lexicon dates the book to 2010; the catalogue dates it to 2009.

### Archives and parish names

In a 2004 interview she said that in 1995, with the riksantikvarie, she had started Riksarkivets vänförening Pro Memoria. The biographical lexicon lists her as founder and member from 1993 until 2012, earlier than the year she gave, and does not record a chairmanship.

On 23 June 1994, while she was still speaker, the government made her chair of Stiftelsen Framtidens kultur, a foundation drawn from the dissolved wage-earner funds, from 1 July 1994. On 15 December 1994 the new government, under culture minister [Margot Wallström](/people/margot-wallstrom), removed her and three other members from 19 December as a consequence of the change of government. The lexicon’s dates of 1994–2012 do not match that term.

She also worked to keep old parish names in the population register, having sat on the 1983 population-registration committee from 1983 to 1988. Lennart Hedquist, a later chair of the Riksdag’s tax committee, wrote that proposals to drop the parish or historic socken—first in a state inquiry, later as the Church of Sweden merged rural parishes—threatened genealogical continuity, and that after a 2010 official report the old socken names were kept where that was possible.

### The history of Moderate women

She was a co-founder and the first chair of Sällskapet för Moderata Kvinnors Historia, which the biographical lexicon dates from 2001, and later its honorary chair. For the Moderate Party’s centenary the society published *Moderata pionjärer: kvinnor i politiskt arbete 1900–2000* (2004), edited by Ann-Cathrine Haglund, Ann-Marie Petersson and Inger Ström-Billing. Troedsson contributed “Ebon Andersson – flickan från Masthugget som blev akademiker, riksdagsman och högerkvinnoledare” and “Vad hände sedan?”, on what she called a shift from freedom of choice toward state-directed equality in family policy. Separate political books, *Den kommenderade familjen* (1999) and *Frigör familjen* (2000 in the national catalogue; 2001 in some lists), belong with her family-policy writing.

## Break with the party, death and reputation

### Leaving the Moderate Party

In December 2006 Troedsson told Upsala Nya Tidning, in an interview carried by TT, that she no longer recognised the Moderate Party. She had left quietly about a year earlier, she said, by not paying the membership fee. The main reason was tax policy. The party had given up its old aim of *skatt efter bärkraft*—tax according to ability to pay—and had not worked hard enough for uniformity and consistency. Taxes in Sweden were far too high, especially for low earners and families with a heavy maintenance burden, so that people who paid tax became dependent on benefits without need. When she was active, she said, the party had wanted people to live on their wages and those on lower incomes to choose their way of life. In the three elections of September 2006 she voted for different parties, which she would not name, called herself *allmänborgerlig* (generally bourgeois), and said the four non-socialist parties together could make people more independent.

Later accounts dated the break to 2006 and added a judgement the interview had not used. In *Fokus*, Lillemor Melsted wrote that disappointment with events and with Fredrik Reinfeldt's government led her to leave the Moderates in 2006. A 2014 *Smålandsposten* editorial instead pointed to the new Moderates' turn in family policy after the [2006 election](/facts/2006-swedish-general-election), and said the parting was friendly. Her own account still put the unpaid fee about a year before the interview, and kept the emphasis on tax.

### Death and the Riksdag memorial

Troedsson died on 3 November 2012 at Hakesta, near Grillby. She was 83 and had been ill for some time. She is buried at Hacksta cemetery, in Enköping municipality. She and her husband had six children, five of whom lived to adulthood. At the memorial the chamber was told that she left five children, twelve grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

On 14 November 2012 the Riksdag held a parentation. Speaker [Per Westerberg](/people/per-westerberg) recalled her as the first woman in the office, from 1991 to 1994, and before that as first deputy speaker, deputy minister for social affairs and a Moderate member. He spoke of family and tax policy, of the inquiry that recast the budget procedure in the financial crisis, of Baltic contacts after the Soviet collapse, and of her writing on Hakesta. He called her warm and stubborn, with a razor-sharp intellect—strong-willed, resilient and courageous—and the chamber stood in silence for one minute.

### How she was remembered

Obituaries set the first woman Speaker beside the tax specialist whose family ideal lost ground in her own party. Melsted wrote that family taxation, her great cause, had kept moving away from her ideal, and quoted Gösta Bohman, otherwise sparing with praise of women: "Den flickan har en räknemaskin i huvudet" ("That girl has a calculating machine in her head"). She was, the same piece said, reliable and straight, and extraordinarily stubborn.

In 2014 Sällskapet för Moderata Kvinnors Historia, which she had chaired, published *Moderat med klubba, grep och penna: Fru talman Ingegerd Troedsson*, edited by Ann-Cathrine Haglund, Ingrid Erneman and Ann-Marie Petersson. *Smålandsposten* called the book a solemn tribute. Quoted in the book, Ulf Adelsohn named stubbornness as the fault—she never gave way—and Haglund wrote that the same obstinacy sometimes drove Bohman to despair, while no one matched her tax arithmetic on families with children. [Maria Abrahamsson](/people/maria-abrahamsson) argued that the line of maximum freedom of choice in family policy would not lead to equal pay. The right to choose, she wrote, gains its value only when women are fully aware of the economic consequences, a view she believed Troedsson would have shared. Martin Tunström noted that few well-known contributors discussed the break, which he read as Moderate loyalty, [Bo Lundgren](/people/bo-lundgren) being unusual in taking up her criticism of Reinfeldt and Finance Minister Anders Borg.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/ingegerd-troedsson