Else Cederborg, Ezine article: "When Women Were Punished for Being Women", previously published

This crime against a certain group of Danish women stemmed from the ideas of Eugenics. However, it also was fed by obsolete ideas of women, morals and sexuality. In both cases it was an attempt to keep society free of "degenerate individuals" by which was meant people who suffered from inherent illnesses, especially of a mental character. The so-called experts felt that letting these "sub-humans" breed would be to endanger society and that had to be stopped at all costs.
It happened in the beginning of the 1900th century, but officially it didn't stop until 1961 when the infamous habit of intering women who were considered "retards" ended. Up til then the morally suspects - i.e. the so-called "lose" women - ended up on the small island of Sprogø. Men convicted of more common crimes than being "lose" were sent to another island by the name of Livø. The main reason for this cruelty also was the wish to protect the society at large against "bad, defected genes". Being classified as "immoral" also was a goodbye to the dreams of having children as it would take a fierce fight which they were bound to lose. They might dream, but their reality was that they were not let loose from the island without being sterilized and those of them who already had children most often lost their right to see them. Also because these children were put up for adoption and were expected to break off connections with their presumably immoral and thus degenerate mothers.

Some of these women left the island on their own, but that was a dangerous exploit that might cost them their lives: They set out on an attempt to escape by swimming. However, none seems to have succeeded in this dangerous exploit.
What is so sad is that what earned the women the name of "retarded" was their lifestyle, not their actual medical condition. To be a woman and to have lovers was in itself an indication that they were mentally defective. It is a backward way of thinking rooted in old fashioned considerations about women and sexuality. One's wish to think that this happened several hundred years back in time is assailed by facts: It did not end until 1961 which means 9 years before the Danish, feminist movement, the "Redstockings" started their actions which went on into the late 1980'ies.
One may wonder at the reasons why these women were considered fitting inmates of an island like Sprogø. However, what brought them there didn't differ from some men's life style and a man who had a child out of wedlock was not interred the way a woman was likely to be. And it is ironic that the island sometimes swarmed with men visiting it in the hope of meeting some of these presumably easy women. Nobody seems to have thought that someone setting sail and venturing out on an erotic expedition to meet immoral women was just as "bad" as they were supposed to be for less.

 

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