Shaping Policy
Prenatal house visit, Johns Hopkins Hospital Dispensary Visiting Nurse Service
Funding public health
Despite the apocalyptic predictions of anti-suffragists, women voters did not immediately transform American politics; their views ranged across the same political spectrum as men’s. One area where suffrage made a difference was health policy.
Lawmakers took rapid action to pass the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act in 1921, hoping to win over their new constituents. This act provided funding for clinics, visiting nurses, and prenatal care.
Women became an important voting bloc on healthcare issues. Scholars believe that suffrage led to measurable improvements in maternal and infant mortality.
Eddie Berenice Johnson (U.S. House of Representatives)
Kim Schrier (U.S. House of Representatives)
Alumnae Magazine, March 1965 (Chesney Medical Archives)
Lauren Underwood (U.S. House of Representatives)
Holding office
Women held elected office in some western states before the passage of the 19th Amendment, but after 1920, their numbers slowly increased. In 2019, women still made up less than thirty percent of state and national elected officials.
Given the long period of training for medical workers, moving into a second career in public service could be especially daunting. Nevertheless, many women with medical backgrounds felt that politics was the best arena to strive for the health and well-being of their communities.
On the national level, Eddie Bernice Johnson became the first registered nurse elected to Congress in 1992, after fifteen years as Chief Psychiatric Nurse at the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital. She has served thirteen consecutive terms representing Texas's 30 District.
The first female physician elected to national office was Kim Schrier, who represents Washington's 8th Congressional District. A pediatrician, she decided to run for Congress in 2018 based on concerns about health care policy.
Hopkins alumns
Among the early Hopkins graduates to run for office was Mary Stuart Lux, School of Nursing class of 1945. Lux recalled that she was motivated to become involved in local politics by the growing Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. She was elected to the Washington State House of Representatives in 1965.
Most recently, Lauren Underwood became the youngest African American woman to serve in the United States House of Representatives when she was sworn in as Congresswoman for Illinois’ 14th District in January 2019. Her path to public service includes a dual Masters degree in Nursing and Public Health from Johns Hopkins, and she is licensed as a nurse in Illinois, Maryland, and Washington D.C. She ran for office in part to protect quality, affordable healthcare for all Americans.
The decision to speak out
It’s difficult to imagine, from our vantage point, a world where women’s exclusion from government was the norm. Yet in 1900, 1910, and 1919, the weight of history was on the side of suffrage opponents.
Protesting for suffrage was a difficult choice that risked career and social standing, especially for women seeking acceptance as medical professionals. Non-white women faced significantly more danger when they tried to make their voices heard.
The decision to speak out on political issues remains fraught for workers in the medical field. Their training emphasizes scientific objectivity, yet the clinic is a microcosm of social ills.
For some, producing research and policy recommendations is a powerful form of advocacy.
For others, witnessing the structural forces that keep people sick is the beginning of activism or a political career, much as it was for suffragists in the early twentieth century.