She established and developed the role, and after eight years (two terms) the UN Organization for Children UNICEF engaged her to assist in spreading the institution to other countries.
Flekkøy travelled extensively, participated in professional organizations and wrote books and articles on children's rights.
[4][5] Through her mother, she was the granddaughter of historian and minister of foreign affairs Halvdan Koht and women's activist Karen Grude Koht,[6] and through her father she was the granddaughter of superintendent of schools Matias Skard and teacher Gyda Benedikte (born Christensen) and niece of Torfinn, Bjarne, Eiliv, Olav, Vemund and Gunhild Skard and Målfrid Birkeland.
From 1962 to 1981, she was married to psychologist Kjell Magne Flekkøy (born 1939) and had three children: Eirik, Kjetil and Ingunn.
Then she worked as a psychologist at the Emma Hjorth Home [no; nn] for mentally handicapped children in 1968–1969 and at the Nic Waal child psychiatric institute [no] in the Oslo area from 1969 to 1972.
[8][2][7] She was an active leader in the YWCA scouts and a member of the board of SOS Children's Villages in Norway.
She contributed to the expansion of research on children in Norway and pioneered the efforts to obtain a total ban on corporal punishment, which was adopted in 1987.
Afterwards she became a senior fellow at UNICEF's International Child Development Center in Florence, Italy, to promote the concept of children's commissioner worldwide.