Withington worked at
Jane Addams'
Hull House settlement in Chicago as a young woman. at several schools in Boston, and lectured on the "moral and economic benefit" of home gardens in Boston in 1907. In 1908, she supported
William Jennings Bryan's campaign for president, saying "I think the intelligent suffragists have decided personal opinions on political matters and, therefore, it would be disastrous to the woman suffrage movement for them to commit themselves to either party." In 1909, Withington contributed to a
Boston Globe feature on "Why Women Wage Earners Should Organize", alongside
Emily Greene Balch,
Margaret L. Foley,
John Golden,
John F. Tobin, and Henry Sterling; she wrote, "Women have always done more than their share of the work of the world, and now, for the first time, they are beginning to realize its value." In 1911, as secretary of the School Voters' League, she organized the political campaign of
Susan Walker Fitzgerald, when she ran for the Boston school board. She served on the executive board of the Massachusetts Political Equality Union. She represented the
Women's Trade Union League of Boston and the Political Equality League of Boston in the American delegations to the
International Congress of Women meetings in The Hague in 1915, and in Zürich in 1919. In 1927, she was a delegate to the
First Pan Pacific Conference on Education, Rehabilitation, Reclamation and Recreation, held in Honolulu, where her older brother lived. == Publications ==