Alice Masaryková

She is a prominent figure within the field of applied sociology and known to many as the daughter of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and the First Lady of Czechoslovakia.

[5] After she finished her studies, Masaryk was invited to stay at the University of Chicago Social Settlement (UCSS) where she met Julia Lathrop, Mary McDowell and Jane Addams.

This encounter and the time spent in the USA "influenced her future professional development...[by] learn[ing] the progressive American methods of social work".

[7]After returning to Czech lands she worked as a teacher in České Budějovice from 1907 to 1910, where she taught geography and history at a secondary educational level.

Masaryk was one of the founders of the sociological department at the Charles University in Prague in 1911, which focused on social pathologies including topics like: "reality of poverty, the working and living conditions of the industrial workers of Prague, neglected children and the family, alcoholism, venereal disease, nutrition, and social hygiene.

[12] Berkovcová describes the reasoning for the founding of the school as follows: As the war drew to an end, human problems mounted rapidly throughout Bohemia.

[14] The objective of the school was shaped by the "sociology developed by Jane Addams and George Herbert Mead at the University of Chicago...and the UCSS.

[23] The interfering was based on a public uproar in the U.S., in which Masaryk was openly supported by prominent personalities like Julia Lathrop, Jane Addams and Mary McDowell.

[24] In 1919 Alice Masaryková was one of the first women elected as members of parliament of the Czechoslovak Republic founded on 28 October 1918, and headed by her father Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk as the first president.

In 1928 Masaryková was the president of the First International Conference of Social Work and at a consequent meeting in 1939 clearly outlined her political attitude when "she spoke of the need for each country to pursue 'liberty, equality, and fraternity' as a means of producing a democratic unity of all people... she stressed that a democracy truly concerned about the welfare of all people would be economically stabler and politically more humane.