Chase G. Woodhouse

Chase Going Woodhouse (March 3, 1890 – December 12, 1984) was an American politician, feminist, suffragist and educator. She served as a member of the United States House of Representatives representing the Second Congressional District of Connecticut, becoming the second Congresswoman from Connecticut, the first elected as a Democrat, and the first woman born outside the United States in either chamber of the U.S. Congress.

Early life and education Woodhouse was born to American parents in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She attended Science Hill School in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and finished in 1908. She went to study at McGill University, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in 1912 and a Masters of Arts degree with Honors in 1914, both in Economics. She then studied at the University of Berlin and the University of Chicago. After graduating from McGill University, she began her career as a college professor and spent part of it as a well-known political figure in the women's suffrage movement and later in the Democratic Party of the State of Connecticut. While serving as a fellow in political economics at the University of Chicago, Chase Going met and eventually married a professor of government there, Edward Woodhouse. They had two children, Noel and Margaret. While in office, she was a political activist for women's advancement in careers beyond education, focusing on combining motherhood and feminism. Woodhouse introduced the bill, "H.R. 1584", to the subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor, which identified unequal labor practices and wages between men and women. She ran for reelection to the Eightieth Congress in November 1946 but was defeated by Republican Horace Seely-Brown Jr. While out of office, she resumed her women's advocacies. She became executive director of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), based in Washington, D.C., in 1947 and 1948. Democrats, like President Harry Truman believed Woodhouse was a valuable link to women voters and encouraged this appointment. She was special consultant to the Director of Price Stabilization, from 1951 to 1953. Woodhouse began serving as the director of the Auerbach Service Bureau for Connecticut Organizations in Hartford in 1954. She was also a member of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women and served on the Connecticut Humanities Council. She served as a delegate to the Connecticut State Constitutional Convention in 1965. In 1967, she was chairman of the Governor's Committee on the Status of Women. She earned the prestigious Ella T. Grasso Award for Outstanding Service at the end of her professional career. Some of the articles she wrote were included in the American Journal of Sociology. A few of her most famous articles are "The Status of Women", published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1931 and "A Study of 250 Successful Families", published in Social Forces in 1930.