Fredrika Bremer was a Finnish-born Swedish writer and reformer. Her Sketches of Everyday Life were wildly popular in Britain and the United States during the 1840s and 1850s and she is regarded as the Swedish Jane Austen, bringing the realist novel to prominence in Swedish literature. In her late 30s, she successfully petitioned King Charles XIV for emancipation from her brother's wardship; in her 50s, her novel Hertha prompted a social movement that granted all unmarried Swedish women legal majority at the age of 25 and established Högre Lärarinneseminariet, Sweden's first female tertiary school. It also inspired Sophie Adlersparre to begin publishing the Home Review, Sweden's first women's magazine as well as the later magazine Hertha. In 1884, she became the namesake of the Fredrika Bremer Association, the first women's rights organization in Sweden.

Feminism in Sweden is a significant social and political influence within Swedish society. Swedish political parties across the political spectrum commit to gender-based policies in their public political manifestos. The Swedish government assesses all policy according to the tenets of gender mainstreaming. Women in Sweden are 45% of the political representatives in the Swedish Parliament. Women make up 43% of representatives in local legislatures as of 2014. In addition, in 2014, newly sworn in Foreign Minister Margot Wallström announced a feminist foreign policy.