Paying the Price of Citizenship: Gender and Social Policy on Venereal Disease in Stockholm, 1919–1944

This article studies how policy on venereal disease participated in the construction of twentieth-century Swedish citizenship. Contact tracing and mandatory medical treatment, the two cornerstones of the Swedish attempt to eradicate venereal disease, became part of the contemporary citizenship discourse. Policy on venereal disease in Sweden was administered by infectious disease officers in every county and provincial physicians in every district. These civil servants were helped by the local police, who searched for recalcitrant patients. To be fully entitled to the rights of free medical care required extensive cooperation from the ill, some of whom found it impossible to comply. In Stockholm women were more frequently targeted by this legislation and were often treated more severely.