Skutnabb-Kangas was born in Helsinki, Finland, and her mother tongues were Finnish and Swedish.

[1][2][3] After receiving her education at single sex schools[4] in Helsinki, she worked for a short time at the teacher training college.

In 1967 and 1968, she was in the United States, where she worked for Einar Haugen at the Department of Nordic Languages at Harvard.

At the beginning of the 1980s, she developed the concept of linguicism, with which she summarized the discrimination of minority languages.

[7] In 2000, a book was published with the title Rights to language: equity, power and education; celebrating the 60th birthday of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas by her husband British linguist Robert Phillipson.