Norwegian Association for Women's Rights

The Norwegian Association for Women's Rights (; NKF) is Norway's oldest and preeminent women's and girls' rights organization and works "to promote gender equality and all women's and girls' human rights through political and legal reform within the framework of liberal democracy." Founded in 1884, NKF is Norway's oldest political organization after the Liberal Party. NKF stands for an inclusive, intersectional and progressive mainstream liberal feminism and has always been open to everyone regardless of gender. Headquartered at Majorstuen, Oslo, NKF consists of a national-level association as well as regional chapters based in the larger cities, and is led by a national executive board. NKF has had a central role in the adoption of all major gender equality legislation and reforms since 1884. NKF aims to represent the interests of all those who identify as girls and women. Its basic principle is that full and equal enjoyment of human rights is due to all girls and women. NKF works for women's political rights, legal equality and representation of women in politics, equal education, working life and economic justice, strengthening women's perspectives in foreign policy and international development, sexual and reproductive rights, ending violence against women, and LGBT+ rights. NKF supports legal protections against discrimination and hate speech on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. NKF was founded on the initiative of Gina Krog and Hagbart Berner by 171 prominent women and men of the progressive liberal establishment, including five Norwegian Prime Ministers, and was modeled after the predecessors of the League of Women Voters in the U.S. From the early years the association worked to bring women into the political mainstream. Traditionally the most important association of the Norwegian bourgeois-liberal women's rights movement and historically associated with the Liberal Party, NKF is today a big tent coalition with members from the centre-left to the centre-right. The association has always been Norway's most important mainstream feminist organization and has successfully campaigned for women’s right to education, the right to vote, the right to work, the adoption of the 1978 Gender Equality Act, and the establishment of the Gender Equality Ombud. At the behest of NKF and affiliated organizations, Norway became the world's first independent country to introduce women's suffrage in 1913.