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Breaking Barriers

Through its earliest products and hiring practices, Johnson & Johnson was dedicated to improving the lives of women consumers and employees. When the company launched in 1886, eight of its original 14 employees were women. That bold choice ensured that the budding startup was influenced by the needs and minds of women from its very beginning. Today, Johnson & Johnson is proud to carry on its longstanding tradition of empowering women through healthcare innovation, education, and opportunity.

Johnson & Johnson also created advanced positions for women employees. By 1908, a quarter of the company’s departments were supervised by women.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Johnson & Johnson was founded at a time when doctors first began formally studying women’s health and childbirth. At the turn of the 20th century, the vast majority of American women gave birth at home, often without the help of a trained midwife or with medical professionals untrained in sterile procedures. In an unsterile environment, infections were common and claimed the lives of one in ten infants and many mothers. To combat these statistics, Johnson & Johnson released its first Maternity Kit in 1894. The kit included sterile medical supplies to help with birth and the first days of life, as well as a science-based educational pamphlet for expectant mothers and their delivery aides. Included in the supplies were sanitary napkins, which the company began marketing as a unique consumer product for menstruation only three years later.

The first Johnson & Johnson sanitary pads were also known as Lister’s Towels, a nod to Dr. Joseph Lister who developed sterile surgery and inspired the company’s founding. Later pads were given names to sound more fashionable and less like a feminine hygiene product. NUPAK and MODESS were among these brands.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

In 1897, Johnson & Johnson introduced the world’s first mass-marketed pads: Sanitary Napkins for Ladies. These napkins provided a clean and safe alternative to the various homemade materials women and girls had relied on for period protection. However, social norms forbade women for asking for such products by name, which complicated the marketing and sales of these products. In response, Johnson & Johnson got creative. Among its resourceful strategies in the 1920s were silent purchase coupons. These ensured that women could purchase pads without needing to ask for the product or utter a single word. 

Throughout the 20th century, Johnson & Johnson continued to create innovative products in support of women’s health. It was the first company to provide safe and effective prescription family planning products starting in the early 1930s. These products, along with the company’s sanitary protection, helped enable women to take a larger role outside of the home.  Today, as the company has become a global corporation, its reach extends around the world. Alongside its pioneering products, the company has launched many educational initiatives in areas where many still lack access to professional medical care. These programs have saved and improved the lives of mothers and babies, to help them reach their full potential. 

Based on the need for a trusted family planning product, Johnson & Johnson’s operating company began manufacturing ORTHO-GYNOL in 1931. It was the first contraceptive gel available by prescription. Later, in the 1960s, Johnson & Johnson was among the first companies to develop a birth control pill.

Image courtesy: Johnson & Johnson Archives

Inside the company, Johnson & Johnson is dedicated to empowering women. Today, women make up more than a third of its corporate executive base and many are actively involved in programs like the Mentoring Edge, which provides mentors for employees. The company also offers flexibility for parents and a generous parental leave policy, including 17 paid weeks off for new moms based in the U.S.

Outside the company, Johnson & Johnson is committed to fostering the next generation of female leaders. A major supporter of the Girl Up—the United Nations Foundation’s adolescent girl campaign—Johnson & Johnson is working to help empower girls and help them transform their communities. The company also donates sanitary products to girls and women in developing countries to ensure their periods don’t prevent them from attending school or going to work. Other initiatives, such as STEM2D, aim to increase the number of undergraduate women enrolling in and declaring majors in the critical STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields.

For over 130 years, Johnson & Johnson has worked to improve the lives of women. Through its   pioneering products, forwarding-thinking company policies, and its giving, the company continues its tradition of investing women and girls around the world to help them reach their full potential.

Because women make more than 80 percent of a family’s healthcare, STEM2D seeks to increase the number of women practicing medicine and developing the technology and products that keep people healthy.

Image courtesy: iStock.com/asiseeit

Today, more than a century later, Johnson & Johnson continues to improve childbirth conditions across the globe. The company partners with the International Confederation of Midwives to subsidize midwifery training and advance quality delivery services in communities around the world.

Image courtesy: Mark Tuschman, Johnson & Johnson Archives

Published April 25, 2017

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