Lil Karhola Wettergren
Dagmar Sigbritt Lil Karhola Wettergren was a Swedish entrepreneur. Noteworthy is her role in the creation (in the 1950s) of the paper diaper, and in 1970 she became the first female board member in a Swedish public limited company Husqvarna AB.[1]
Biography
Dagmar Drangel was born on 20 May 1924 as third child (all daughters) of Hugo Drangel and May Gustafson. She died on 21 November 2008 in Stockholm. In 1946 she married her co-student and lawyer Ola Wettergren (died in 1981), with whom she had four children. From 1981, she was married to Arvo Karhola, the vice president of the Finnish Tampella. The couple then settled in Helsinki . After her husband's death in 2003, she moved back to Sweden and Stockholm.
Lil Karhola Wettergren died [2] at the age of 84 years on May 21, 2008.
Career
After studying law and clerkship (1946, University of Uppsala),and work in the provincial government of Älvsborg Countyin Vänersborg, she moved with her husband to Stockholm in 1949 to work at Pauli's tissue mill.
Her father had worked in the paper mill since 1927 and subsequently transformed the old mechanical pulp mill to a paper tissue mill. The initiative came at the right time because of World War II shortage of cotton and bandages in Europe. This combined with the shortage of both textiles and detergents, gave birth to the idea of the paper diaper.
In 1956, Lil bought out Pauliström from the family and began producing paper diapers in Sweden's first diaper machine, which is constructed on the mill. Her own children served as test panel for the new product.
During the period 1959 - 1965 she was president of the company, a pioneer in the male-dominated process industry.
Then she sold the company to Mo and Domsjö AB, which she continued to serve as head of Modo's tissue division. The overall male-dominated corporate culture made it difficult to accept her as a leader, and after a few years she resigned from the company to start her own company, Paper Lil AB.
In 1969 Lil Wettergren (the name of her husband) became the first female (not belonging to the founding family) member of the Board of Directors of a Swedish listed company, namely Husqvarna AB. At that moment the company was shifting away from the production of weapons at Husqvarna Vapenfabriks Aktiebolag to more "softer" products like sewing machines and white goods, which the men in the Board thought a woman as CEO would do good.[3]
Following this job, she became a Board member of the companies Abbas AB (1975–86), MoDo (1976), Mo & Domsjö AB (1982-1991), Gota Bank (1980-1991; first woman in a bank board).
In 1987 she wrote her memoires in the book "Raised to the world of men" (Fountain , ISBN 91-7160-820-6), a book about a woman experiences in a male business world.
Between 1983-2003 she managed the family estate Horns Väsby.