In 1884 thirteen women were serving as county superintendents and ten as superintendents of city schools; six were presidents, thirty-five secretaries and fifty treasurers of school boards. In 1885 the school board of Des Moines elected a woman city superintendent at a salary of $1,800, with charge of eighty teachers, including two male principals. In 1900 twenty-one women were elected county superintendents. A large number are acting as school trustees but it is impossible to get the exact figures.
The office of State librarian always was filled by a woman until 1898, when Gov. Leslie M. Shaw placed a man in charge. The librarian of the State University always has been a woman. There are two women on the Library Board of Des Moines.
Clerkships in the Legislature and in the executive offices are frequently given to women.
For six years Mrs. Anna Hepburn was recorder of Polk County, and this office has been held by women in other counties.
A law of 1892 requires cities of over 25,000 inhabitants to employ police matrons. They wear uniform and star and have the same authority as men on the force, with this difference in their appointment: The law makes it permanent and they can not be dismissed unless serious charges are proved against them.
A woman has been appointed a member of the Board of Examiners for the Law Department of the State University. For a number of years women have been sitting on the State boards of Charities and Reforms. They have served on the Board of Trustees of the Soldiers' Orphans' Home. A woman is on the State Board of Education, and another on the State Library Commission.
The law provides that women physicians may be employed in the State hospitals for the insane, but only two or three have been appointed. The Board of Control may appoint a woman on the visiting committee for these asylums but this has not yet been done. A few women have served on this board.
The law also provides for women physicians in all State institutions where women are placed, but does not require them.
The Legislature of 1900 passed a bill to establish a Woman's Industrial Reformatory of which the superintendent must be a woman. The salary is $1,000 a year.
Occupations: No profession or occupation is legally forbidden to women. In 1884 Iowa furnished, at Marion, what is believed to be the first instance of the election of a woman as president of a United States national bank.