page_title: Alma Sundquist
section_title: Later career (1919-1939)
hierarchical_section_title: Alma Sundquist / Career / Later career (1919-1939)
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of the Swedish physician and women's rights activist Alma Sundquist (1872-1940)
context_page_description: Alma Maria Katarina Sundquist was a Swedish physician and a pioneering female specialist in the treatment of venereal diseases. A committed women's rights activist, she campaigned for better working conditions for women, addressed problems associated with unhygienic homes and prostitution, and promoted the need for sexual education for girls. She fought for women's suffrage, contributing to the inaugural meeting of the Swedish Association for Women's Suffrage in June 1902. Internationally, in 1919 she represented Sweden at the founding of the Medical Women's International Association in New York and attended the First International Congress of Working Women in Washington, D.C. In the early 1930s, on behalf of the League of Nations, she was one of the three contributors to a report on the slave trade in women and children in the countries of Asia.
context_section_description: In March 1919, Sundquist announced to audiences in the United States that women's suffrage had been granted by the first chamber of the Riksdag to all women over age 23. She noted that the property restrictions for voting had been removed and that approval by the second chamber, which would include the right to stand for office, was imminent. In May, full suffrage was granted and Sundquist made plans to attend several conferences in the United States in the fall. She arrived on 17 September to attend the International Conference of Women Physicians, sponsored by the YWCA. During the conference, she argued in favour of sex education in schools, which had recently passed in Sweden. Though American physicians agreed that education was needed, they advocated for home instruction on the subject. On 21 October, a dinner was held for women physicians attending the conference and they decided to form the Medical Women's International Association. Sundquist was elected to serve on the Committee of Twelve to organize the association, whose purpose was to work together internationally to advocate for women to be granted full citizenship and to create a progressive programme to promote public health.
  Moving on to Washington, D.C., in late October, Sundquist attended the First International Congress of Working Women, as a member of its executive committee. The purpose of the conference was to ensure that labour reform addressing rights and standards for both women and men that included the abolition of child labour, compulsory education, equal opportunity for employment, equal pay for equal work, and the establishment of minimum wages and maximum hours was adopted by the newly formed International Labour Organization. In a presentation on labour conditions in Sweden, she reported that children of 14 and over could work if a physical examination proved they were able. She also noted that women had been pushed out of jobs that they had performed during the war and were seeking the right to continue in them.
  Sundquist participated in the 1922 Constitutive Assembly of the Medical Women's International Association held in Geneva and was later elected president of the organization, serving from 1934 to 1937. She continued to press for economic reforms. The passage of the Competence Act of 1923 opened civil service careers to women. In 1926, she assisted in the reorganization of the Women's Doctors Permanent Committee to the Women's Physicians' Club, to which she was elected chair in 1929.
  In 1930, along with Bascomb Johnson, an American writer, and Karol Pindór, a Polish diplomat, Sundquist was appointed by the League of Nations to prepare a report on the slave trade in women and children in Asia. When the report was completed in 1932, the three were appointed to a travelling commission and charged with compiling information of a more international nature, since the first report focused on national statistics. They began in Japan and from there travelled to China, Indochina, Indonesia and India, before moving on to Tehran, Bushehr, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Haifa, and worked cooperatively with various government officials to obtain information. In 1938, the Contraception Act she had opposed for so long was abolished. She continued her private practice until 1939.
caption: Sundquist portrait by Goodwin
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