Born in 1939 and nurtured under the shadow of WWII, Brundtland was the daughter of politically minded parents. Her father served as Norway’s Defense Minister and both parents were active in Norway’s Labor Party. Like her father before her, Gro studied medicine before embarking on a career in politics. Her first controversial platform became that of women’s rights to abortion; she argued that children born into extreme poverty or those who are unwanted by their parents face unimaginable conditions of deprivation and negligence, if not worse.
Although her time as a clinician was meager, Gro’s experience in the field of medicine provided her the analytical tools with which to approach a life in politics. In 1989 she was quoted in Time as saying, "There is a very close connection between being a doctor and a politician. The doctor tries to prevent illness, then tries to treat it if it comes. It's exactly the same as what you try to do as a politician, but with regard to society."
Her “politician-as-doctor” philosophy was no doubt influenced by her service as Norway’s Minister of the Environment from 1974 to 1979, where she realized that not only was her work on the environment “inextricably involved with almost every other Ministry” (Brundtland, 2002, 73), but also that it was impossible to isolate the ecological concerns of Norway from those of other nations, the Chernobyl disaster being a case in point. Just as a single point of cancerous tissue may spread to outlying areas of the body, environmental concerns can also have a far-reaching impact on the international community.
Brundtland’s attention to the international community continued during her years as Prime Minister. She was elected to her first term in 1981, becoming Norway’s youngest and first female to ever hold the position. During this term and the two (non consecutive) ones that followed, Brundtland was persistently criticized by the press and other public figures for her outward focus on Norwegian politics, which involved a fair amount of travel abroad. Although a majority of her time was indeed spent on domestic affairs, her participation as Norway’s Prime Minister in the international arena was unprecedented.
