Profile
Christine Stromberger
Birth:
1949
Training Location(s):
Dr. Phil, University of Vienna (1984)
Primary Affiliation(s):
Frauen beraten Frauen [Women Counsel Women]
Ministry of Women's Affairs of the Republic of Austria
Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Austria
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Career Focus:
Women’s counselling, politics.
Biography
Christine Stromberger, née Mannsberger, is a psychologist, former employee of the Ministry of Women's Affairs and other ministries of the Republic of Austria, and chairwoman of the Vienna Intervention Centre against Violence in the Family. As a lecturer she taught at the universities of Vienna, Graz and Klagenfurt.
Christine Stromberger was born in Burgenland in 1949 and grew up with her parents and an older brother. Both children were good at school, but due to the costs involved, only her brother could study after school. Christine Stromberger graduated from the Commercial Academy and then spent a year in London. When she came back to Austria, she took a job as a secretary and later as an editor at the publishing house Fritz Molden. During this time, she met her husband, to whom she was married from 1972 until 1979. She liked working in the publishing house in principle, but the unequal treatment of female and male employees ‒ especially in the lower hierarchies ‒ inflamed her political engagement. Together with a colleague she founded a works' council in the publishing house. At around the same time she started psychotherapy, which marked a central turning point in her life:
"When I went to the therapist because I was dissatisfied, unhappy with my marriage and life and so on, he immediately treated me somehow - although I didn't have any noticeable symptoms [...] - what I told him about life with my husband and my expectations and frustrations, he was actually less interested in that than in the fact that I was depressed, that I couldn't sleep [...] He was actually not interested in my life" (Stromberger, interview with V. Luckgei, 2016).
"That was then somehow an experience that I thought to myself: 'What is he actually telling me?' [...] and then I talked to the guy instead of therapy, I discussed it and somehow I came up with: 'I'm going to study now!'" (Stromberger, interview with V. Luckgei, 2016)
Therapy awakened in Stromberger the desire to study, which she fulfilled in 1976 when she began to study psychology and sociology at the University of Vienna. She came into contact with the women's movement as a student and began training in client-centered therapy while studying. During her training she got to know the women with whom she founded the first autonomous women's counselling center in Austria Frauen beraten Frauen [Women Counsel Women] in 1981. They were supported by Johanna Dohnal, who was then State Secretary for General Women's Affairs. A close connection with this committed feminist politician was established which became essential for the women’s counselling center and Stromberger's future professional career.
Until the late 1980s, Stromberger worked in the counselling center as a psychosocial counsellor. It was also in consulting practice that she found the topic of her dissertation “Ursachen für körperliche und seelische Beschwerden von Frauen im Klimakterium “ [Causes of physical and mental complaints of women in the climacteric]. By interviewing 60 women with qualitative and quantitative survey tools, including the Bem Sex Role Inventory, she was able to show that "women who have internalized the female gender role and the associated expenses and duties to a high degree [...] suffer from mental and physical complaints during the menopause more often than other women" (Stromberger, 1984, p. 212). As one of the first psychology students in Austria, she explicitly referred in her work to feminist authors such as Phyllis Chesler and the Boston Women's Health Collective.
In the academic year 1985/86 she took up her first teaching position at the Psychological Institute of the University of Vienna. The topic of her first seminar "Women-specific problems: Psychology of women in midlife" was inspired by her dissertation. Until her last course in 2001 she continuously expanded her repertoire. In an interview Christine Stromberger reports that she focused her teaching on three main areas: women’s lives in the social context, female socialization and sexuality. To this end, Stromberger and her colleagues from the counselling center integrated new perspectives into psychological teaching:
"The special thing [...] was to bring these feminist and women-specific areas and aspects into psychology and into this institute. This simply did not exist before, nor did it really happen afterwards, nor did it happen in other courses. All the feminist literature of the time, the English and American literature and also German literature, we worked with it and brought it in [to the university and made it known to the students" (Stromberger, interview with V. Luckgei, 2016).
The students appreciated these extraordinary lectures offered to them not only by Stromberger but whole group of critical lecturers who taught at the institute. Students showed their solidarity for the group in the late 1980s and early 1990s when distribution struggles were fought at the Psychological Institute. Successes of this struggle were the temporary integration of women-specific teaching positions into the compulsory curriculum and a 10-year guest professorship in women's studies at the Psychological Institute of the University of Vienna.
Stromberger changed her area of work from psychosocial counselling to politics at the end of the 1980s. For two years she worked in the Women's Policy Department of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.
When the Social Democrat Johanna Dohnal became Austria's first Minister for Woman’s Affairs in 1991, Christine Stromberger accepted the offer to become part of her cabinet. Stromberger worked for Dohnal throughout her entire term of office to implement women's policy at the government level. As a result, throughout Austria, various women's projects have been supported, childcare has been expanded, and significant legislative changes have been initiated in the areas of equal treatment and protection against violence. Austria's Protection Against Violence Act, which came into force in 1997 and has served as an international model, goes back to the anti-violence campaign initiated by Johanna Dohnal. Under the Act, Violence Protection Centers were set up to implement the protection effectively. Stromberger is an advisory board member of the Vienna Intervention Centre against domestic violence. She remained in the Ministry under the subsequent Social Democrat ministers Helga Konrad and Barbara Prammer. She then worked for a short time at the Ministry of Science and from 2000 to 2005 at the OECD in Paris within the framework of international education projects. Afterwards, until her retirement in 2012, she worked in the International Department of the Ministry of Education in Vienna. As of 2020 she has been living for eight years in a cross-generational housing project in Vienna which she cofounded.
By Vera Luckgei (2020)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
By Christine Stromberger
Stromberger, C. (1984). Ursachen für körperliche und seelische Beschwerden von Frauen im Klimakterium [Unpublished dissertation, University of Vienna].
Stromberger, C. (1986). Die Wiener Frauenberatungsstelle. Entwicklung und Erfahrungen eines selbstverwalteten Frauenprojekts. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 11(1–2), 101–106.
Stromberger, C. (1991). Frauen am Rande des Nervenzusammenbruchs? Widerspruch zwischen Feminismus und Institution. In M.-L. Angerer, E. Appelt, A. Bell, S. Rosenberger, & H. Seidl (Ed.) Auf glattem Parkett : Feministinnen in Institutionen (pp. 153–176). Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik.
Stromberger, C. (1992). Was ist eine Frau? Überlegungen zur Suche nach dem weiblichen Selbst. In G. Benetka (Ed.) Gegen-Teile: Gemeinsamkeiten und Differenzen einer kritischen Psychologie (pp. 191–200). Profil-Verlag.
Stromberger, C. (Ed.). (1990). Lebenskrisen Abschied vom Mythos der Sicherheit Wien: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik.
By and about Christine Stromberger
Stromberger, C. (2016, April 26) Interviewed by V. Luckgei [Video Recording].
About Christine Stromberger
Luckgei, V., Ruck, N. & Slunecko, T. (2020) Feminist Psychology at the University of Vienna, 1984-2000: A Case Study of a Temporary Hub in Feminist Psychological University Teaching. in T. Teo (Hrsg.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of Psychology.
Christine Stromberger
Birth:
1949
Training Location(s):
Dr. Phil, University of Vienna (1984)
Primary Affiliation(s):
Frauen beraten Frauen [Women Counsel Women]
Ministry of Women's Affairs of the Republic of Austria
Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Austria
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Career Focus:
Women’s counselling, politics.
Biography
Christine Stromberger, née Mannsberger, is a psychologist, former employee of the Ministry of Women's Affairs and other ministries of the Republic of Austria, and chairwoman of the Vienna Intervention Centre against Violence in the Family. As a lecturer she taught at the universities of Vienna, Graz and Klagenfurt.
Christine Stromberger was born in Burgenland in 1949 and grew up with her parents and an older brother. Both children were good at school, but due to the costs involved, only her brother could study after school. Christine Stromberger graduated from the Commercial Academy and then spent a year in London. When she came back to Austria, she took a job as a secretary and later as an editor at the publishing house Fritz Molden. During this time, she met her husband, to whom she was married from 1972 until 1979. She liked working in the publishing house in principle, but the unequal treatment of female and male employees ‒ especially in the lower hierarchies ‒ inflamed her political engagement. Together with a colleague she founded a works' council in the publishing house. At around the same time she started psychotherapy, which marked a central turning point in her life:
"When I went to the therapist because I was dissatisfied, unhappy with my marriage and life and so on, he immediately treated me somehow - although I didn't have any noticeable symptoms [...] - what I told him about life with my husband and my expectations and frustrations, he was actually less interested in that than in the fact that I was depressed, that I couldn't sleep [...] He was actually not interested in my life" (Stromberger, interview with V. Luckgei, 2016).
"That was then somehow an experience that I thought to myself: 'What is he actually telling me?' [...] and then I talked to the guy instead of therapy, I discussed it and somehow I came up with: 'I'm going to study now!'" (Stromberger, interview with V. Luckgei, 2016)
Therapy awakened in Stromberger the desire to study, which she fulfilled in 1976 when she began to study psychology and sociology at the University of Vienna. She came into contact with the women's movement as a student and began training in client-centered therapy while studying. During her training she got to know the women with whom she founded the first autonomous women's counselling center in Austria Frauen beraten Frauen [Women Counsel Women] in 1981. They were supported by Johanna Dohnal, who was then State Secretary for General Women's Affairs. A close connection with this committed feminist politician was established which became essential for the women’s counselling center and Stromberger's future professional career.
Until the late 1980s, Stromberger worked in the counselling center as a psychosocial counsellor. It was also in consulting practice that she found the topic of her dissertation “Ursachen für körperliche und seelische Beschwerden von Frauen im Klimakterium “ [Causes of physical and mental complaints of women in the climacteric]. By interviewing 60 women with qualitative and quantitative survey tools, including the Bem Sex Role Inventory, she was able to show that "women who have internalized the female gender role and the associated expenses and duties to a high degree [...] suffer from mental and physical complaints during the menopause more often than other women" (Stromberger, 1984, p. 212). As one of the first psychology students in Austria, she explicitly referred in her work to feminist authors such as Phyllis Chesler and the Boston Women's Health Collective.
In the academic year 1985/86 she took up her first teaching position at the Psychological Institute of the University of Vienna. The topic of her first seminar "Women-specific problems: Psychology of women in midlife" was inspired by her dissertation. Until her last course in 2001 she continuously expanded her repertoire. In an interview Christine Stromberger reports that she focused her teaching on three main areas: women’s lives in the social context, female socialization and sexuality. To this end, Stromberger and her colleagues from the counselling center integrated new perspectives into psychological teaching:
"The special thing [...] was to bring these feminist and women-specific areas and aspects into psychology and into this institute. This simply did not exist before, nor did it really happen afterwards, nor did it happen in other courses. All the feminist literature of the time, the English and American literature and also German literature, we worked with it and brought it in [to the university and made it known to the students" (Stromberger, interview with V. Luckgei, 2016).
The students appreciated these extraordinary lectures offered to them not only by Stromberger but whole group of critical lecturers who taught at the institute. Students showed their solidarity for the group in the late 1980s and early 1990s when distribution struggles were fought at the Psychological Institute. Successes of this struggle were the temporary integration of women-specific teaching positions into the compulsory curriculum and a 10-year guest professorship in women's studies at the Psychological Institute of the University of Vienna.
Stromberger changed her area of work from psychosocial counselling to politics at the end of the 1980s. For two years she worked in the Women's Policy Department of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.
When the Social Democrat Johanna Dohnal became Austria's first Minister for Woman’s Affairs in 1991, Christine Stromberger accepted the offer to become part of her cabinet. Stromberger worked for Dohnal throughout her entire term of office to implement women's policy at the government level. As a result, throughout Austria, various women's projects have been supported, childcare has been expanded, and significant legislative changes have been initiated in the areas of equal treatment and protection against violence. Austria's Protection Against Violence Act, which came into force in 1997 and has served as an international model, goes back to the anti-violence campaign initiated by Johanna Dohnal. Under the Act, Violence Protection Centers were set up to implement the protection effectively. Stromberger is an advisory board member of the Vienna Intervention Centre against domestic violence. She remained in the Ministry under the subsequent Social Democrat ministers Helga Konrad and Barbara Prammer. She then worked for a short time at the Ministry of Science and from 2000 to 2005 at the OECD in Paris within the framework of international education projects. Afterwards, until her retirement in 2012, she worked in the International Department of the Ministry of Education in Vienna. As of 2020 she has been living for eight years in a cross-generational housing project in Vienna which she cofounded.
By Vera Luckgei (2020)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
By Christine Stromberger
Stromberger, C. (1984). Ursachen für körperliche und seelische Beschwerden von Frauen im Klimakterium [Unpublished dissertation, University of Vienna].
Stromberger, C. (1986). Die Wiener Frauenberatungsstelle. Entwicklung und Erfahrungen eines selbstverwalteten Frauenprojekts. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 11(1–2), 101–106.
Stromberger, C. (1991). Frauen am Rande des Nervenzusammenbruchs? Widerspruch zwischen Feminismus und Institution. In M.-L. Angerer, E. Appelt, A. Bell, S. Rosenberger, & H. Seidl (Ed.) Auf glattem Parkett : Feministinnen in Institutionen (pp. 153–176). Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik.
Stromberger, C. (1992). Was ist eine Frau? Überlegungen zur Suche nach dem weiblichen Selbst. In G. Benetka (Ed.) Gegen-Teile: Gemeinsamkeiten und Differenzen einer kritischen Psychologie (pp. 191–200). Profil-Verlag.
Stromberger, C. (Ed.). (1990). Lebenskrisen Abschied vom Mythos der Sicherheit Wien: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik.
By and about Christine Stromberger
Stromberger, C. (2016, April 26) Interviewed by V. Luckgei [Video Recording].
About Christine Stromberger
Luckgei, V., Ruck, N. & Slunecko, T. (2020) Feminist Psychology at the University of Vienna, 1984-2000: A Case Study of a Temporary Hub in Feminist Psychological University Teaching. in T. Teo (Hrsg.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of Psychology.