Jenny Åkesson

Jenny Ellida Åkesson (April 15, 1867 – February 12, 1941) was a Swedish socialist and labor activist. The daughter of the early Malmö socialist Carolina Åkesson, she belonged to the Malmö women workers' club, the first women's organization in the Swedish social democratic movement, and in 1889 was chosen as one of the bearers of its banner. After moving to Lund, Sweden, she co-founded the city's women workers' union in about 1892 and its Social Democratic women's club in 1906.

Åkesson made the milestones of her private life into public political statements. In 1889, she and the socialist agitator Wilhelm Åhlund rejected both church and civil marriage, instead entering into a union before the Malmö Social Democratic association, an event reported in newspapers across Sweden. The couple announced their first child in the socialist press as "a nihilist girl", a notice that drew widespread coverage, and gave two of their children long strings of names taken from figures ranging from Aristotle to recently executed anarchists. For much of her life, Åkesson lived in poverty, often supporting the family on her own while Åhlund was repeatedly dismissed from work for his political views and was eventually disabled in a workplace accident.