Alma
Maria Katarina Sundquist (1872–1940) 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 (FKPR) 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.
Born on 23 March 1872 in Torp, Medelpad, Alma Maria Katarina Sundquist
was the youngest of the three daughters of the postmaster Johan Erik
Sundquist and Katharina Kristina Holmer.[1] After
her father died, she moved with her mother and two sisters to Sundsvall.
When their house was destroyed by the great fire of 1888, they moved to
Stockholm where she graduated from the Wallinska high school in 1891. She
then attended Uppsala University where she undertook preparatory studies for
medicine and philosophy.[2] During
her schooling, she met fellow student, Ada
Nilsson. The two women became friends as well as colleagues and in 1892
joined founder Lydia Wahlström as
a member of the Uppsala Women's Student Association, along with Adèle
Philipson, Gulli Rossander, Signe Trygger, among others.[1]
Despite medical practice regulations which barred women from working in
public hospitals, she went on to study medicine at the
male-dominated Karolinska Institute. While in medical school, Sundquist and
Nilsson experienced discrimination from faculty members who refused to give
them higher marks than male students. Graduating in 1900, the following
January, Nilsson and Sundquist wrote a plea, signed by almost every woman
doctor in the country, as well as many female medical students, protesting
their inability to work even as paediatricians or on behalf of women
patients, except in private practices.[1] Sundquist
pointed out that the Royal letter of 1873, which accredited the degree
programmes for "candidates of medicine" at the Karolinska Institute,
contained no such restrictions.[1][3] Since
women had been admitted to study there in 1870,[3] she
demanded the right to work in public facilities.[1]
In 1901, Sundquist opened a private practice in Stockholm which she ran
until 1939. Specializing in gynaecology, venereal diseases and dermatology,
she taught hygiene in girls' schools and lectured on sexual education
throughout the country. She was instrumental in providing access to
contraception via physicians' prescriptions and furthered research on
venereal diseases.[2] Simultaneously,
from 1902 to 1918, she served as the physician at the private
girls' Detthowska School and in 1903 began working at the Stockholm City
Polyclinic specializing in sexually transmitted diseases. At the clinic, she
treated patients who lived in extreme poverty in unsanitary conditions, many
of them prostitutes. She saw first hand the damage that prostitution
regulations caused for them, and supported reformers like Johan Erik
Johansson, who called for the sex trade to be decriminalized and regulation
to cease.[1]
Sundquist's medical experiences led to her commitment to social reforms
addressing the issues women encountered.[1] She
was a pioneering campaigner for women's suffrage, joining the board at the
inaugural meeting of the Society for Woman Suffrage in June 1902, though she
resigned the following year. From the end of 1903 until early 1904, she
worked on the regulatory Committee for the Prevention of Infectious Sexually
Transmitted Diseases and in 1904, was elected to membership of the newly
established Dermatological Society.[2] The
law barring women physicians from working in public facilities was
overturned by new legislation in 1909.[1]
In 1910, Sundquist joined the board of the recently formed Swedish Society
for Racial Hygiene (SSR),[2] an
organization founded on the principles of the European Eugenics Movement,[4] but
after one year, she was no longer listed on the board.[1] That
year, wanting both to control immoral behaviour and address the declining
birth rate in the country, the Riksdag passed a contraception law (Criminal
Code, Chapter 18. § 13, commonly known as Lex Hinke after Hinke Bergegren,
the first person prosecuted under it).[5][6] The
law provided that those disseminating public information on contraceptives
or involved in their sale could receive sentences of up to two years in
prison. Sundquist was very critical of the Contraception Act and began
writing various articles about the spread of venereal diseases,[2] as
well as on improving working conditions for women and granting suffrage.[7][8] She
was a co-founder of the Swedish Association for Parental Protection and
Sexual Reform, established in 1911, where she campaigned against
prostitution.[2]
In 1916, Sundquist participated in two conferences for women physicians and
medical students, which were spearheaded by Wahlström. They led to the
establishment of the Women Doctors' Permanent Committee which aimed to press
for changes to laws which prevented women from working as professionals in
the medical field, and to assist other women academics in similar
endeavours. Among those involved were Nilsson, Andrea Andreen, Elin
Odencrants, and Nanna Svartz. One of their first acts was to write to the
National Medical Board and press for more supervisory positions for women.
In the attached report, they documented that the majority of medical
candidates were women, that women were equally capable of treating male
patients and that of the 49 licensed women physicians, 20 had already
individually been granted supervisory rights when no male doctors were able
to take the post.[1]
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.[9] In
May, full suffrage was granted[10] and
Sundquist made plans to attend several conferences in the United States in
the fall.[2] She
arrived on 17 September to attend the International Conference of Women
Physicians, sponsored by the YWCA.[11][12] 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.[13] On
21 October, a dinner was held for women physicians attending the conference
and they decided to form the Medical Women's International Association.[12] 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.[12][14][15]
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.[16][17] 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.[18][19] 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.[20]
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.[12][21] She
continued to press for economic reforms. The passage of the Competence Act
of 1923 opened civil service careers to women.[1][22] 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.[1]
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.[2][23][24] 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.[25] 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.[26] In
1938, the Contraception Act she had opposed for so long was abolished. She
continued her private practice until 1939.[2]
Alma Sundquist died in Stockholm on 7 January 1940.[1] She
is remembered as one of Sweden's most prominent pioneering venereologists in
the first half of the twentieth century, actively engaged in solving social
and political challenges faced by women.[2] Through
her work, she brought the consequences of sexually transmitted diseases to
the Swedish authorities and consulted on developing policy for prevention
and treatment of them.[24][2] She
was committed to changing laws to improve conditions for women, as well as
eradicating protective legislation which treated people differently based on
gender.[2]
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