Woman's club movement in the United States facts for kids
The woman's club movement was a big social movement in the United States. It helped women realize they had a duty to change public policy for the better. Women's groups existed before, but they became a true "movement" during the Progressive Era (1896–1917).
At first, white, middle-class women started these clubs. Later, African-American women led their own important clubs. Many clubs began as social groups where women read and discussed books. Over time, they became powerful forces for change in the U.S.
Both African-American and white women's clubs worked on many issues. These included education, reducing alcohol use, stopping child labor, and improving justice for young people. They also worked on legal reform, protecting the environment, and creating libraries. Women's clubs helped start things like kindergartens and juvenile court systems.
Later, they fought for women's suffrage (the right to vote) and against lynching. They also supported family planning. These clubs gave women, who had little political power, a way to make a difference. As women gained more rights, the need for these clubs to push for change became less urgent. Today, fewer people join women's clubs, but many still exist and help their communities.
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What Were Women's Clubs?
The woman's club movement was a key part of the Progressive Era social reforms. Many clubs focused on helping their communities. This was often called "municipal housekeeping." It meant that women saw their communities like their homes. They believed that if they took care of their homes, they should also help take care of their cities.
This idea helped women get involved in government. They saw their homes as the building blocks of society. So, public life and home life were connected. Women's clubs taught women how to get involved in public life. They helped women gain both social and political power.
Many clubs grew by having current members invite or suggest new ones. Clubs often had different committees or groups working on specific issues. Many women's clubs even built their own clubhouses. These buildings are still used for meetings and events today. Some clubs also published their own magazines and newsletters.
How Women's Clubs Started
Before the first big Progressive Era women's clubs, like Sorosis and the New England Women's Club, most women's groups were linked to men's groups or churches. Early on, women often got involved in their communities through religious groups. This was one of the few ways women could contribute outside their homes. Some of the first women-led groups were religious charities in the early 1800s.
Later, women also joined groups fighting against slavery, for temperance, and for women's suffrage. African-American women helped organize many anti-slavery groups, starting in 1832. White women followed their lead in creating abolition groups.
As women had more free time, they started women's clubs. At first, most clubs focused on reading, learning, and social events for white middle-class women. These clubs helped women share ideas. They realized their thoughts were important. Together, they could act on these ideas. Clubs in new areas gave women a chance to read and make friends. Many clubs had their own book collections for members.
Women's clubs were not just copies of men's groups. They gave women a place to share ideas as equals. These ideas often turned into real action. Women felt they had a special moral duty to improve society. As clubs shifted from self-improvement to community work, they aimed to "exert a refining and ennobling influence." They believed clubs would create better women and a better country.
Large groups like Sorosis and the General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC) grew quickly. The GFWC had about a million members by 1910. This large organization helped many clubs work together. However, the GFWC did not allow African-American clubs to join. Many white clubs also excluded black and Jewish women. Some white clubs did not address racial inequality.
During World War I, women's clubs were very active. They raised money, worked with the Red Cross, and helped the Home Guard. They also knitted socks, rolled bandages, and sold war bonds. In Texas, clubs created recreation centers for soldiers. Women's clubs also helped during the Great Depression and World War II.
In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed. Then, in 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed. Women's clubs saw a new rise in membership. Women's clubs, especially the GFWC, pushed for some of the first child labor laws. They worked to protect children who were hired because they were cheaper than adults.
African-American Women's Clubs
Even before African Americans were free from slavery, black women started groups to help their communities. They were quick to organize for self-help. One of the first African-American women's clubs was the Female Benevolent Society of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, started in 1793. Another group, the Colored Female Religious and Moral Society, began in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1818. Black women's clubs helped raise money for the anti-slavery newspaper The North Star. Many black churches exist because of the hard work of African-American women.
After slavery ended in 1865, black women continued to organize. They often worked with churches to care for their communities. Many of these groups were strong enough to survive tough times. Between 1880 and 1920, black women in Indianapolis created over 500 clubs.
During the Progressive Era, many black women moved to northern cities. Their club movement in the 1890s focused on social and political reform. Black women faced the same problems as white women but were often left out of services. They were excluded from white clubs and even from clubs created by black men. Being in a woman's club helped black women fight stereotypes. It also gave them higher social standing in their communities.
Black colleges helped create African-American women's clubs. Ida B. Wells was a key leader during this time. Many clubs were named after her. Other important organizers were Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Mary Church Terrell. In 1896, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was founded. The NACW grew from Wells's campaigns against lynching. Ruffin helped bring the NACW together.
Both black and white women helped create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. By 1900, almost every black community had a women's club. By 1910, African-American women's clubs were more numerous than white women's clubs, compared to population size. By 1914, the NACW had 50,000 members. Black women wanted to be seen and heard. The NACW helped them organize to improve their communities.
The NACW raised over $5 million in war bonds during World War I. During the Great Depression, black women's clubs started focusing on political change. The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) became a leading group. After World War II, working-class and poor black women took on more organizing roles.
Faculty Wives Clubs
Faculty Wives clubs started in many American universities in the early 1900s. These clubs brought together women whose husbands worked at the university. They were smaller and focused on their local university community.
These clubs, formed during the Progressive Era, offered community, cultural education, and service. A main goal was to build community among university families. For example, wives at Ball State University held dinners for their husbands to help them relax and build friendships. At the University of Washington, a "Newcomers club" helped new faculty wives feel welcome.
These clubs also volunteered their time. At Emporia State University, the Faculty Wives club made bandages for the Red Cross during both World War I and World War II. At Ball State University, the club regularly sewed at the local hospital.
Faculty Wives clubs were important throughout much of the 20th century. Later, some joined other groups to become University Women's clubs. This showed how university staff and gender roles were changing. Other wives' clubs are still active today.
Women's Clubs Today
African-American women's clubs started to decline in the 1920s. By the 1960s, white women's clubs also saw less interest. As women had more ways to socialize, many clubs found their members getting older. It was hard to find new, younger members.
Women's clubs also started to hand over their work to city governments. They became less powerful. Also, more women began working outside the home in the 1960s. They had less free time for club activities. By 2010, the number of women's clubs had dropped a lot. This is part of a larger trend where many clubs in the U.S. are losing members. Younger people often have less free time.
However, some clubs are still very active. The Houston Heights Woman's Club and The Women's Club of Forest Hills have found ways to attract younger members. The Des Moines Women’s Club, founded in 1885, still supports its community. It offers scholarships, an art exhibition, and cares for its historic clubhouse. The president of the Ebell Club in Los Angeles says it's wonderful to be surrounded by women from three generations.
Women's clubs still focus on helping their communities. The GFWC gives awards for journalism about women. It also provides scholarships, especially for women who have experienced domestic violence. The NACWC is still one of the top non-profit groups in the U.S. It now works on modern issues like fighting AIDS and violence against women. Many clubs today also offer cultural events for their communities. Some groups continue their original missions, like the Alpha Home, which cares for elderly black people.
Clubs that have lasted into modern times have been able to change with society. Clubs like the Colony Club (1903) and the Cosmopolitan Club (1909) are still successful. In the early 2000s, many new private women's clubs formed. These groups support personal and professional connections. Their growth is due to new technology and the isolation felt during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
How Women's Clubs Made a Difference
Women's clubs, especially during the Progressive Era, greatly shaped their communities and the country. Many progressive ideas became reality because of these clubs. This includes kindergartens, juvenile courts, and protecting parks. Clubs, often with their love for reading, helped promote and raise money for schools, universities, and libraries. Women's clubs were often leaders in civil rights. They spoke out against lynching and pushed for women's and voting rights.
Civil Rights
Women's clubs helped promote civil rights. They also improved conditions for black women. Some clubs worked to understand fears about immigrants. Settlement houses, created by women's clubs, helped European immigrants settle and fit in.
The Fannie Jackson Coppin Club was started in 1899. Its goal was to provide housing for African-American visitors who were not allowed in segregated hotels. Some white women's clubs supported desegregation early on, but these efforts were small. The Chicago Woman's Club allowed a black member, Fannie Barrier Williams, after a long process. Few clubs worked across racial lines. However, the YWCA and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) sometimes worked with both black and white women.
The Woman's Missionary Council for the southern Methodist church spoke out against lynching. Women's clubs, like the Texas Association of Women's Clubs, also condemned lynching. The ASWPL aimed to end lynching in the United States.
Women's groups, like the NACWC, began to support desegregation in the 1950s. The Montana Federation of Colored Women's Clubs led civil rights campaigns from 1949 to 1955. They also helped write anti-segregation laws. The Woman's Political Council of Montgomery started the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955.
Education
Women's clubs were known for promoting education. Getting women on school boards was a goal for many clubs in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Women's groups also talked about class sizes. The Chicago Woman's City Club asked for no more than thirty children per class. Chicago clubs also helped pay for school lunches. Clubwomen protested cuts to teacher salaries. Black women's clubs created education opportunities for their communities when white people ignored them.
Kindergartens and nursery schools in the U.S. were started by women's clubs. The first nursery school was created by women's clubs in Chicago. The Woman's Club of El Paso started the first kindergarten in Texas in 1893. Clubs often helped create schools for young people who had broken laws. The Texas Association of Women's Clubs (TAWC) worked for decades to create what became the Crockett State School, originally for "delinquent" black girls.
Women's clubs supported job training and more education options for young people. The Woman's City Club worked with others to create a group that helped students find jobs after school. This group also gave scholarships to students in need. The Chicago Woman's Club raised $40,000 for a trade school for boys. Hester C. Jeffrey started clubs that raised money for young black women to take classes at what is now the Rochester Institute of Technology. Clubs also taught the blind and provided job skills.
Many clubs believed that requiring young people to go to school would help solve child labor problems. In Chicago, the Woman's City Club worked to help students stay in school past age 14. A group in Illinois helped pass a law in 1897. It made sure children aged seven to fourteen were in school for sixteen weeks a year.
Women's clubs also helped create higher education. The Texas Federation of Women's Clubs was a big reason for starting Texas Woman's University. Clubs raised money for new college buildings. Other clubs created scholarship funds. These groups also showed that higher education helped women. Today, women's clubs still offer scholarships for college.
Art and Music
Women's clubs helped spread appreciation for art across the country. Clubwomen often gave art to schools. Other clubs created traveling art collections and art libraries. Clubs also hosted art shows. The FFWC promoted Old Folks at Home as Florida's state song.
African-American women promoted the arts. They focused on celebrating African American traditions and culture. This included music, theater, and dance. Clubwomen saw themselves as keeping art and tradition alive. The Chicago and Northern District Association of Colored Women's Clubs (CNDA) hosted famous singers. The CNDA also held an exhibit of African art, literature, and music in 1927.
Environment and Conservation
Women's clubs worked to protect natural resources. Many started by making their cities and states more beautiful. Clubs sponsored and maintained playgrounds and cemeteries. Later, clubs, like one in Michigan, worked to reforest parts of the state. In Idaho, women's clubs helped stop logging in national forests. The GFWC was active in forestry since 1890. They also shared information about conservation with their 800,000 members.
The GFWC later surveyed natural scenic areas in the U.S. in 1915. They wanted to find areas that needed protection. As women saw natural areas being developed, many objected. Women worked in existing clubs and formed new ones to protect the environment.
Women's clubs helped create the Mesa Verde National Park. Women's groups in Colorado supported its creation. The Colorado Federation of Women's Clubs (CFWC) helped. In California, clubs helped save Sequoia trees. They also protested against the harmful Hetch Hetchy Dam. May Mann Jennings and the Florida Federation of Women's Clubs campaigned for Florida's first state park in 1916. This park became the start of Everglades National Park. Idaho women's clubs also helped establish some of the first national parks. In Utah, clubs helped save Monument Valley. Pennsylvania clubs successfully pushed for a state Department of Forestry. In 1916, the GFWC supported creating the National Park Service.
In the 1930s, clubs like the PEO Sisterhood protected the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. In New Mexico, the Valley of Fires Recreation Area was created by the Carrizozo Woman's Club.
Women's clubs also helped save historical places. As early as 1856, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association began restoring Mount Vernon. Black women's clubs also led environmental activism. They created "redemptive spaces" for black immigrants in northern cities. They turned abandoned buildings into community centers, parks, and playgrounds.
Sanitation
The Woman's City Club and the City Club of Chicago worked on waste disposal. The Woman's City Club cared more about the city's health and safety. The Carrizozo Woman's Club of New Mexico helped bring sanitation to their city.
Health
Women's club members were involved in hospital reform and creating hospitals. In Seattle, Anna Herr Clise started what became Seattle Children's Hospital. Other clubs helped set up health centers and clinics.
Women's clubs worked to improve public hygiene and food and drug safety. The Ladies' Health Protective Association started in New York City in 1884. It aimed to fix unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking district. By 1897, it was a national group.
Women in the Pure Foods Movement, including the GFWC, pushed for a federal law. This law became the Pure Food and Drug Act. In Indiana, clubwomen got a state hygiene lab. It checked food and drugs and helped enforce health laws. Other clubs, like the Plymouth Woman's Club, inspected restaurants themselves when there were no laws. Women also worked to ensure clean and safe drinking water.
Libraries
The GFWC created a national plan for libraries. Clubwomen believed books improved lives. Women’s clubs helped start many public libraries. They gave their own book collections, raised money for buildings, and worked as librarians. They also got male leaders to help with public funding. After libraries were built, clubs pushed for state funding and money from the Carnegie Library Endowment. The American Library Association (ALA) and GFWC estimate that women’s clubs started 75 to 80 percent of public libraries in the U.S.
Often, women's clubs had their own private libraries. From this, they wanted to create community libraries for everyone. Many clubs made public libraries a key part of their mission. The Woman's Club of Bala Cynwyd was formed mainly to create a public library. In Colorado, women's clubs started "traveling libraries" with the state government. These were very popular in the early 1900s. In Georgia, clubwomen used traveling libraries to help fight illiteracy. In South Carolina, traveling libraries belonged to clubs but were open to the public.
Cherokee County, Texas, got its first public library from the Bachelor Girl's Literary Club. The El Paso Public Library was largely created by members of the Woman's Club of El Paso. In Texas, the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs (TFWC) helped create the Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the Texas Historical Commission. About seventy percent of all libraries in Texas were started because of the TFWC. Clubs in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, helped get taxes to support their public library. Other clubs, like those in Kentucky and Tennessee, used membership fees to support their libraries. When libraries were threatened, clubs like the Woman's Club of Norfolk protested.
Reform
Labor
Women's clubs tracked and investigated child labor and working conditions in the late 1800s. Clubwomen worked to reduce the hours children could work in Indiana.
Some clubs became active in labor strikes. The Woman's City Club of Chicago helped resolve strikes. They also demanded that police protect picketers. The Woman's Club of Chicago helped form the Illinois Woman's Alliance (IWA). This group aimed to "prevent the exploitation of women in sweatshops." Women-led groups, like the National Consumers League (NCL), created a "white label" for stores that met their standards for fair wages and working hours.
Legal Reform
Women's clubs helped create juvenile courts. The first juvenile court started in Chicago in 1899. The Chicago Woman's Club felt children should not be treated like adults in court. Clubwomen went to court with children to ensure fair treatment. The Chicago Woman's Club also started a Protective Agency for Women and Children in 1886.
By 1906, there were juvenile courts in twenty-five states. These courts were praised. One writer said, "If the whole club movement... had accomplished nothing else it would still be well worth while." Women's clubs helped pass juvenile court laws in Ohio, Missouri, and Los Angeles.
Women's clubs also worked for marriage reforms that would help women. An act in 1907, the Expatriation Act, said a woman took her husband's citizenship when she married. To vote or have a legal identity, women needed to be independent from their husbands' citizenship. In 1922, the United States Congress passed the Married Women's Act. This gave married women their own nationality in the U.S. In 1936, Congress allowed women who lost citizenship due to marriage to get it back if they were no longer married.
Women's clubs also looked at issues of consent. The Chicago Woman's Club presented bills to the legislature that later became laws.
Prison Reform
The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of Washington state urged Spokane to hire a female jail matron for women prisoners in 1902. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn helped make this happen. The Chicago Woman's Club asked for a female jail matron in 1884. In Los Angeles, clubwomen influenced the city to hire female police officers.
Fashion
Women's clubs were also interested in changing fashion. Some reforms focused on corsets and how tight clothing was unhealthy. Women's clubs also spoke out against using bird feathers in fashion.
Besides reform, clubs used fashion to show creative arts. Fashion shows by the CNDA in the 1930s and 1940s included music and dance. They were held at the Savoy Ballroom.
Suffrage
Women's clubs became very active in the fight for women's right to vote. Before women could vote, clubs had to work with men's groups who supported them. The focus on women's suffrage grew in the late 1800s. In 1868, Kate Newell Doggett helped start a chapter of Sorosis. This was the first women's group in Chicago to focus on suffrage. Later, the Chicago Woman's Club also promoted suffrage.
Other groups specifically for suffrage formed after the Civil War. As women's clubs grew, so did suffrage organizations.
African-American women's clubs like the NACW fought for both women's suffrage and the right for black men to vote. Many black women joined groups like the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Women in the National Baptist Woman's Convention also supported suffrage.
Women's clubs hosted talks about suffrage. They invited suffrage leaders to speak. After women won the right to vote, clubs continued to help women use their new rights. However, after getting the right to vote, club membership declined until the Great Depression. Then, women came together again for charity work.
Important Women's Clubs
- Alpha Suffrage Club
- Association of Collegiate Alumnae
- Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching
- Atlanta Neighborhood Union
- Charlotte Woman's Club
- Chicago Woman's Club
- Colonial Dames of America
- Colorado Federation of Women's Clubs
- Colored Female Religious and Moral Society
- Daughters of the American Revolution
- Ebell Society
- Francisca Club
- Frederick Douglass Woman's Club
- General Federation of Women's Clubs
- Houston Heights Woman's Club
- Indiana State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs
- League of Women Voters
- Mississippi State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs
- Mount Vernon Ladies' Association
- National Association of Colored Women (NACW)
- National Council of Jewish Women
- National Society of the Colonial Dames of America
- New England Women's Club
- Phillis Wheatley Club
- San Pedro Woman's Club
- Sorosis
- South Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs (SCRCWC)
- Sulgrave Club
- Texas Association of Women's Clubs
- Texas Federation of Women's Clubs
- United Daughters of the Confederacy
- Women's Christian Temperance Union
- Women's Club of El Paso
- Women's City Club of New York (WCC)
- Woman's Health Protective Association
- Women's Joint Congressional Committee
- Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA)
See also
- List of women's clubs
- Feminism in the United States
- Gentlemen's clubs
- Women-only space
- Woman's Christian Temperance Union
- Membership discrimination in California social clubs
- Racial segregation in the United States
