The purpose of this investigation was to explore the tension between the politically conservative image of nursing that has been presented in the current professional nursing literature and the four professional nursing organizations' actual involvement in the suffrage movement. An historical method was used to identify the four professional nursing organizations' opinions, actions, and intentions relative to their positions on women suffrage. The timeframe for this study was 1893 through 1920.

The primary and secondary sources that were used were professional journals; published and unpublished proceedings of each of the four professional nursing organizations; nursing and suffrage archival collections; and historiographies of nursing, women, and the suffrage movement. The four organizations were: The National League of Nursing Education (formerly the Society of Superintendents of Training Schools for Nurses), The American Nurses' Association (The Nurses' Associated Alumnae), The National Organization of Colored Graduate Nurses and the National Association of Public Health Nursing.

Findings indicated that among the four national nursing organizations, organizational endorsement of women suffrage was voted on seven different times. Six votes represented the membership of the National League of Nursing Education and the American Nurses' Association. The additional seventh vote was a report of the international organization's vote. Only two of those seven votes resulted in opposition of organizational support of suffrage.

Nursing organizations, instead of being conservative were progressive. They sought to change the social system by advocating women's suffrage, education, and practice.

To explain why nursing's ties with women history has been incompletely portrayed and often omitted from some historiographies of women, may lie in an underlying prejudice towards nursing and its role by society. The term "nursism" was conceived for the purpose of explaining the prejudice and omission witnessed. How we evaluate the preconceived notions of nursing will impact the solutions to issues facing nursing today.