The status and rights of Women in Sweden has changed several times throughout the history of Sweden. These changes have been affected by the culture, religion and laws of Sweden, as well as social discourses like the strong feminist movement.

During the Viking Age, women had a relatively free status in the Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, illustrated in the Icelandic Grágás and the Norwegian Frostating laws and Gulating laws. The paternal aunt, paternal niece and paternal granddaughter, referred to as odalkvinna, all had the right to inherit property from a deceased man. In the absence of male relatives, an unmarried woman with no son could furthermore inherit the position as head of the family from a deceased father or brother: a woman with such status was referred to as ringkvinna, and she exercised all the rights afforded to the head of a family clan, such as the right to demand and receive fines for the slaughter of a family member, until she married, by which her rights were transferred to her husband. After the age of 20, an unmarried woman, referred to as maer and mey, reached legal majority and had the right to decide of her place of residence and was regarded as her own person before the law. An exception to her independence was the right to choose a marriage partner, as marriages was normally arranged by the clan. Widows enjoyed the same independent status as unmarried women.

Women had religious authority and were active as priestesses (gydja) and oracles (sejdkvinna); they were active within art as poets (skalder) and rune masters, and as merchants and medicine women. They may also have been active within military office: the stories about shieldmaidens is unconfirmed, but some archaeological finds such as the Birka female Viking warrior may indicate that at least some women in military authority existed. A married woman could divorce and remarry. It was also socially acceptable for a free woman to cohabit with a man and have children with him without marrying him, even if that man was married: a woman in such a position was called frilla. There was no distinction made between children born inside or outside of marriage: both had the right to inherit property after their parents, and there was no "legitimate" or "illegitimate" children. These rights gradually disappeared from the local county laws after Christianization in the 11th century.

During the Middle Ages, the status and rights of women varied between different parts of the country, as the local county laws applied different laws in different counties. The first attempt of a national law was Magnus Erikssons landslag from 1350, which established one law for the country side, and one Stadslagen (City Law) for the city, a system which was kept by the Kristofers landslag from 1442. From 1350 onward, the civil status of women were generally the same in both the county law and the city law: an unmarried woman was under the coverture of her closest male relative, and a wife under the coverture of her husband, while a widow was of legal majority.

In 1608, the law texts of the Old Testament from the bible were introduced in the law by amendments, which at least formally significantly worsened women's status. There was, however, a gap between law and practice: despite the fact that unmarried women were legal minors and only widows had the right to represent themselves in court, unmarried women were still in practice allowed to give testimony, sue and represent themselves in court matters, to such a degree that a law reform granted them this right in 1686 to legalize what was already common procedure.

From the Magnus Erikssons landslag of 1350 onward, daughters in the country side inherited half as much as sons. From 1686, the Swedish Church Law 1686 obliged every parish in the country side to provide elementary education to all children regardless of gender, usually provided by the vicar or a teacher employed by the vicarage.

In the countryside, professions were regulated by custom rather than laws. When unmarried, a woman from the peasantry would be expected by social custom to serve in the household of another peasant family as a piga (maid), which was regarded as a way to learn household experience and earn money for a dowry before marriage and was not socially seen as a servant position: when married, the wives of farmers, fishermen and miners all traditionally participated alongside their husbands in their professions, handled them alone in their absence and, if their husbands died without an adult son, in their own name as widows. At least since the 17th century and until the 19th century, women were known to labor as miners and blacksmiths, referred to as gruvpiga (Maid of the Mine).

The custom of a wife acting as the proxy of her husband afforded considerable independence to women especially during the 17th century, when the men were called to serve in numerous wars and their wives were left behind to manage the family affairs in their absence, which was the case both with the wives of common farmer-soldiers as well as with the wives of noblemen, who were left with the responsibility of vast estates and parishes and the task to act as channels to the crown for the estate dependents. In the local community, the wives of the parish vicars had a strong position as a sort of caretaker of the parish social welfare, a position maintained by the system of Widow Conservation until the 19th century.