The Swedish Woman of 2015

SWEA International's annual award to acknowledge a Swedish woman's accomplishments in the world was recently awarded to an inventor. 

  • Petra Wadström received SWEA International’s Woman of the Year Award for her Solvatten invention. She is second from the right here with: (L-R) Christina Moliteus, committee chair; Margaret Sikkens Ahlquist, SWEA International Chair; Petra Wadström; Agneta Nilsson, founder of SWEA. Photo: Kerstin Alm

  • Petra Wadström, inventor of Solvatten, received Swedish Women's Educational Association (SWEA) International’s Award "Årets Svenska Kvinna" (This year's Swedish Female) 2015 at the SWEA Sweden Dinner in Malmö City Hall on August 13.

  • SWEA International scholarship recipients, L-R: Lana Anikina Suran, Sigrid Paskell's Scholarship in Stage Arts; Anna Lorentzon, Scholarship for intercultural relations; Marta Stasiak-Górna, SWEA International Scholarship for research in the Swedish language, literature and society. Photo: Kerstin Alm

  • Wadström grew up outside Stockholm in an art- and nature-loving family. She learned early on to think and create with a vision. As an artist, she has worked a lot with recycled materials and further developed practical, ingenious inventions that attracted attention in Sweden and abroad.

  • Her most famous invention, Solvatten, gives many developing countries access to clean water. The invention warms and purifies polluted water in a portable, two-part 10-liter container with the help of the sun's ultraviolet rays. Women are especially favored by her green invention since they are usually responsible for the household in the parts of the world using Solvatten. It is cheap and easy to use, and Petra's wish was precisely to create a tool that women can use on their own.

  • The jury said, "Petra Wadström's outstanding creativity and philanthropic ingenuity makes her a shining example of a Swedish international woman."

  • About an award winner
    The recipient must be a Swedish woman who in an unprecedented way represents and highlights the Sweden of today in the world. The annual award has celebrated 25 Swedish women who in various ways have been ambassadors for Sweden abroad since 1989.
    For more info on SWEA, see www.swea.org and click here for more on Solvatten.
    In related news, SWEA International also awarded three scholarship recipients with awards for intercultural relations, research in the Swedish language and in the stage arts.