Women's club movement in the United States

The club movement became part of Progressive era social reform, which was reflected by many of the reforms and issues addressed by club members. According to Maureen A. Flanagan, many women's clubs focused on the welfare of their community because of their shared experiences in tending to the well-being of home-life. Tending to the community was often called "municipal housekeeping" during the Progressive era and reflected a shared belief by many club members that home and city life were linked through city hall. By constructing the idea of municipal housekeeping, women were also able to justify their involvement in government. Later, in 1921, Alice Ames Winter describes how women had begun to see "their homes as the units out of which society was built", and that home life and public life were linked. Women's clubs "established the idea that women had a moral duty and responsibility to transform, define and shape public policy". Women's clubs were also "training schools" for women who wanted to get involved in the public sphere. They helped women attain both social and political power. Many women's clubs increased their memberships by having other members sponsor or nominate new members to the group. Clubs often organized themselves by committee, or division. Many women's clubs created and occupied their own clubhouses. Today these clubhouses have continued to be the site of women's meetings and other gatherings. ==History==

, Prior to the founding of the first Progressive era women's clubs, Sorosis and the New England Women's Club, most organizations for women were auxiliaries of groups for men or were church-related. Jane Cunningham Croly of the General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC) wrote in 1898 that women were first able to reach out of their homes through religious institutions. By becoming involved in church or charitable groups, women were able to find companionship and a way to facilitate change in their communities. It was also one of the few ways that women were initially allowed to contribute outside of the home. Some of the earliest women-led organizations were started as religious groups in the early part of the nineteenth century. White women were involved in church charity groups as early as the 1790s. Later, women also started to become involved in antislavery groups, temperance groups and women's suffrage organizations starting in the 1840s. African-American women helped organize many anti-slavery groups, the earliest founded in 1832, and white women followed black women's lead in creating abolition groups. As women began to have more leisure time, they started women's clubs. Initially, most women's clubs focused on literary endeavors, self-improvement and created social opportunities for white middle-class women. Literary women's clubs in pioneer areas gave women an outlet to explore reading and make friends. Many women's clubs maintained book collections for use by club members. Instead of forming a literary club, women in Galveston created a scientific club, which also focused on learning. Croly notes that women's clubs were not created to copy men's groups; instead, they were often created to give women a space to share ideas as equals; these ideas often developed into practical action. As Mary I. Wood and Anna J. H. (Mrs. Percy V.) Pennybacker described it: "Very early the club women became unwilling to discuss Dante and Browning over the teacups, at meetings of their peers in some lady's drawing room, while unsightly heaps of rubbish flanked the paths over which they had passed in their journeys thither." Women justified their movement into social reform by using the Victorian idea that women were naturally morally superior to men. They also saw women's clubs as an intellectual and practical good which would create better women and a better country. Sorosis and the GFWC saw large increases in membership in 1889 and 1890. The GFWC grew to around a million women by 1910, Many evolved into prominent women's clubs and the network later became a more traditional organization with dues paid to its national office, the "American Woman's Republic". Women's clubs were very active in women's suffrage (see below) and helped support the war effort during World War I. Women in clubs raised money, worked with the Red Cross, financed the Home Guard and set up communications within the community to share information quickly. When World War II broke out, women's clubs were involved in volunteering. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, then, in 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed, and women's clubs again grew in size. While there were many organizations that encouraged change around child labor, the GFWC became advocates for some of the first child labor laws. Children were hired because they were cheaper and more manageable than adults. During the early 1900s, women's labor organizations were formed to protect their rights. Among them, was Lenora O'Reilly who helped develop the WTUL that supported wage requests and promoted the end of child labor. African-American club movement Even before African Americans were freed from slavery, black women had started to come together to create organizations which looked after their community's welfare. Black women were very quick to "organize themselves for self-help". One of the first African-American women's club was the Female Benevolent Society of St. Thomas, in Philadelphia, which was started in 1793. At the time, Philadelphia had numerous black organizations. After the African Benevolent Society in Newport, Rhode Island, would not allow women to be officers or vote, women created their own group. Another group, the Colored Female Religious and Moral Society in Salem, Massachusetts was created in 1818. Black women's clubs helped raise money for the anti-slavery newspaper The North Star. Many black churches owed their existence to the dedicated work of African-American women organizing in their communities. Black women's literary clubs began to show up as early as 1831, with the Female Literary Society of Philadelphia. After slavery was ended in the United States with the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865, black women continued to organize and often worked with churches to ensure their communities were taken care of. Many of these organizations were "so resilient that they were able to survive the twin disasters of bank failure and yellow fever". In 1868, black women's clubs were formed in Harris County, Texas. Between 1880 and 1920, black women in Indianapolis, Indiana had created more than 500 clubs addressing various issues. During the Progressive era, many black women migrated to the Northern United States and into more urban areas. The club movement for black women in the 1890s began to focus on "social and political reform" and were more secular. Black women had to face the same issues as white women during this period but were often excluded from services and help that benefited whites only. Black women were not only excluded from white clubs but also from clubs created by black men. In addition, many black women felt as though they were defying stereotypes for their community. Women's clubs allowed black women to combat the period's stereotypes which "portrayed African American women as devoid of morality, sexually wanton and incapable of upholding marital and family responsibilities". Being a member of a women's club also helped give black women greater social standing in their communities. Black colleges helped the creation of African-American women's clubs. Ida B. Wells was an important figure in the growth of these clubs during the Progressive Era. A number of clubs, named after her, were created in large cities across the country. In Chicago, the wealthy former abolitionist Mary Jane Richardson Jones supported the development of several clubs, serving as the first chair of Wells's. Other influential women's club organizers were Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Mary Church Terrell. In 1896, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was founded. The Woman's Club of Norfolk wrote letters and sent care packages to the segregated black units sent to fight overseas. During the Great Depression, black women's clubs began to move towards "structural change and electoral politics". The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) became a dominant group in the women's club movement in African-American circles. Faculty wives' clubs Faculty wives' clubs began to be formed in many American universities in the early 20th century. They were brought together through the careers of the members' spouses. The clubs were localized around their particular affiliation and geographically restricted, thus most of their clubs did not receive the same volume of members nor the publicity of some of the earlier groups. However, their existence can still be seen in various archives at universities across the United States such as University of Washington, Kent State University, Emporia State University, and Ball State University. These Faculty Wives clubs were formed during the Progressive era and served the same functions of community, cultural education, and service that characterized larger groups. One of the clubs' primary functions was fostering community among those affiliated with the university. The wives at Ball State University held regular dinners for their husbands, both to relieve stress and build relationships. By the 1960s, interest and membership in white women's clubs started to decline. Many women today are working long hours or spending time with their children's extracurricular activities. By 2010, the number of women's clubs had significantly decreased across the country. This reflects a trend in all club memberships in the United States: most clubs are losing members because there is a lack of leisure time for younger people. Some clubs have had success with creating programs that are meant to be attractive to younger women. The Des Moines Women's Club established in 1885, continues to support the community today with scholarships, an annual art exhibition, and continued support to its historic club house and museum, Hoyt Sherman Place. Shirlee Haizlip, president of the Ebell Club in Los Angeles, emphasizes what makes women's clubs unique: "It is a wondrous thing to be constantly surrounded by three generations of women." The GFWC gives out the Croly Award for excellence in journalism on topics relating to women. The NACWC continues to be one of the top ten non-profit organizations in the United States. It has adopted modern issues to tackle, such as fighting AIDS and violence against women. The missions of women's clubs, like the Colony Club, founded in 1903, and the Cosmopolitan Club, founded in 1909, remain relevant today, and the clubs remain successful. During the early 21st century, numerous new private women's clubs formed in support of personal and professional affiliations and business networking, including AllBright, Belizean Grove, The Riveter, The Wing and Chief, with growth attributed to factors including advances in technology and the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. ==Impact==

Women's clubs, especially during the Progressive era, helped shape their communities and the country. Some women's clubs also worked to understand people's fear of immigrants during the late 1900s. Settlement houses, created by women's clubs, helped settle and integrate European immigrants. The Fannie Jackson Coppin Club was created in 1899 by members of the Beth Eden Baptist Church, one of the oldest African-American religious institutions in Oakland, California, to "provide hospitality and housing services to African-American visitors who were not welcomed in the segregated hotels and other businesses" in the state. Some white women's clubs promoted desegregation early on, though these efforts were small in scope. The Chicago Woman's Club admitted a black member, Fannie Barrier Williams, only after a long approval process, which included the club deciding not to exclude anyone based on race. Few clubs worked together across racial boundaries, although the YWCA and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) did sometimes welcome bi-racial collaboration. The Woman's Missionary Council of the Southern Methodist Church spoke out against lynching. Women's clubs, like the Texas Association of Women's Clubs also denounced lynching. The purpose of the ASWPL was to end lynching in the United States. Women's groups, like the NACWC, began to support desegregation in the 1950s. They also helped draft anti-segregation legislation. The Woman's Club of El Paso started the first kindergarten in the state of Texas in 1893. Women's clubs were often involved with creating schools for delinquent boys and girls. The Texas Association of Women's Clubs (TAWC) worked for several decades to create what would later become the Crockett State School which was originally meant to help "delinquent" black girls. Women's clubs were involved in vocational training and pushing for additional educational options for all young people. The Woman's City Club worked with the Chicago Woman's Club and the Association of Collegiate Alumnae to create a Bureau of Vocational Supervision which could take a "personal interest in schoolchildren, working directly to place them in appropriate jobs when they left school". The Bureau also created scholarships for needy students. The Chicago Woman's Club raised $40,000 to create an industrial school for boys in Glenwood, Illinois. Hester C. Jeffrey established women's clubs which helped raise the funds for young black women to take classes at what would later become the Rochester Institute of Technology. Clubs, like the Chicago Woman's Club, taught the blind and provided job skills. Many women's clubs believed that compulsory education for young people would help solve many child labor issues. In Chicago, the Woman's City Club worked with other clubs in order to help students stay in school past age 14. The Illinois Collegiate Alumnae association helped the government draw up a law in 1897 to ensure that children between the ages of seven and fourteen were in school for sixteen weeks of the year. Women's clubs helped support and influence the creation of higher education. The Texas Federation of Women's Clubs "was a significant force behind the establishment of Texas Woman's University." Women's clubs helped raise money for new college buildings. Other clubs created scholarship funds for their communities. These organizations also helped produce research showing that higher education benefited women. Women's clubs today continue to sponsor scholarships for higher education. Art and music Women's club activities were seen by contemporaries as helping to spread art appreciation across the country. Clubwomen would often donate art to schools. Other clubs created traveling art collections and art libraries for communities. Clubs also hosted arts exhibits. The FFWC promoted Old Folks at Home by Stephen Foster as the state song. Later, clubs, like a Michigan women's club, would work to reforest parts of the state. In Idaho, women's clubs helped prevent logging in national forests. GFWC had been active since 1890 in areas related to forestry and had a forestry committee. This committee also disseminated information about conservation to the 800,000 members of the group. The GFWC later sponsored "a natural scenic area survey" of the United States in 1915 in order to discover areas that needed conservation. As women saw environmentally fragile areas start to be developed, many objected. The Colorado Federation of Women's Clubs (CFWC) helped McClurg, and created a committee that would eventually become the Colorado Cliff Dwellings Association. In California, women's clubs helped preserve Sequoia trees and protested against "the environmentally destructive Hetch Hetchy Dam". May Mann Jennings and the Florida Federation of Women's Clubs campaigned to create Florida's first state park in 1916, Royal Palm State Park which became the nucleus of Everglades National Park". Idaho women's clubs also helped establish some of the first national parks; and in Utah, women's clubs "were instrumental in preserving Monument Valley". Pennsylvanian women's clubs successfully lobbied for the creation of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry. In 1916, the GFWC supported the creation of the National Park Service. In the 1930s, clubwomen involved in the PEO Sisterhood, protected the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. In New Mexico, the Valley of Fires Recreation Area was created through the work of the Carrizozo Woman's Club. Sanitation The Woman's City Club and the City Club of Chicago both worked on issues relating to waste disposal. The Woman's City Club was, in contrast, more interested in the health and safety of the city as opposed to the men's group who were more interested in making money from sanitation. The Carrizozo Woman's Club of New Mexico helped bring sanitation to their city. Other clubs helped set up health centers and clinics. Women's clubs were involved with improving public hygiene and food and drug safety. Women in The Pure Foods Movement, including the Pure Food Committee of the GFWC, were lobbied for a Federal bill known as the Pure Food and Drug Act. In Indiana, clubwomen "secured a state laboratory of hygiene under the control of the board of health, charged with the duty of examining food and drugs and aiding in the enforcement of health laws". Other clubs, like the Plymouth Woman's Club, undertook restaurant inspections on their own when there were no laws in place to regulate sanitary conditions. Women's clubs promoted talks from experts on birth control. The Chicago Women's Club helped organize the Illinois Birth Control League, which later set up clinics around Chicago. In Reading, Pennsylvania in 1937, Margaret Sanger was a sponsored speaker on a radio program sponsored by the Woman's Club. Libraries . 1899 The GFWC developed a national agenda for libraries across the country. Clubwomen believed that having access to books made people's lives better. Women's clubs helped establish many public libraries by contributing their book collections, raising money for building construction through a variety of activities for years, acting as librarians, cataloguing early collections, enlisting male leaders for public funding, and other management activities. After the public libraries were established, women's clubs lobbied on behalf of the public libraries in state legislatures and also for funding from the Carnegie Library Endowment. In New York, Melvil Dewey found clubwomen in his state to "be staunch allies". Often, women's clubs had created their own private libraries, and from this experience wished to create community libraries for everyone to use. Many women's clubs made the creation of public libraries an important part of their mission. The Woman's Club of Bala Cynwyd was formed with the main initial purpose of creating of a public library in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. In Colorado, women's clubs established "traveling libraries" in conjunction with the state government. They were well-received and very popular in the early 1900s around the country. In Georgia, clubwomen used their traveling libraries to help combat illiteracy in both the white and black communities. In South Carolina, the traveling libraries belonged to women's clubs, but were available to the public. Cherokee County, Texas saw the creation of its first public library with the founding of the Bachelor Girl's Literary Club. The El Paso Public Library was created largely by members of the Woman's Club of El Paso. Legal reform Women's clubs helped establish juvenile courts. The first juvenile court was established in Chicago in 1899 through the urging of the Chicago Woman's Club whose members felt that children should not be treated as adults by the court. Clubwomen from the Chicago Woman's Club went to court with many of the children in order to ensure they were being treated fairly. The Chicago Woman's Club also established a Protective Agency for Women and Children in 1886. Juvenile law in Chicago also recognized children who were without legal guardians and who should be dependent on the state. By 1906, there were juvenile courts in twenty-five states. These courts were praised by contemporaries, like Mrs. John Dickinson Sherman, who wrote in 1906 of the establishment of the juvenile courts, "If the whole club movement of the six states in the last ten years had accomplished nothing else it would still be well worth while." Women's clubs helped pass juvenile court laws in Ohio, Missouri, and in Los Angeles. Women's clubs helped work towards marriage reforms which would benefit women. An act passed on March 2, 1907, called the Expatriation Act, required that when a woman married, she took on the citizenship of her husband. For women to attain a civic or legal identity, such as the right to vote, they needed to have independence from their husbands' citizenship. Women's clubs also looked at issues of consent. The Chicago Woman's Club, which created the Protective Agency for Women and Children, presented bills to the legislature which later passed. One raised the age of consent from 14 to 18. Women's clubs helped assert the right of women to refuse to have sex with their husbands if they chose. Prison reform The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of Washington state was involved in urging the city of Spokane to hire a female jail matron for women prisoners in 1902. In Los Angeles, clubwomen were able to influence the city to appoint female police officers. Fashion Women's clubs were also interested in reforming fashion. Some reform centered around corsets and how tight clothing was starting to be considered unhealthy. Women's clubs also spoke out against the use of bird feathers in women's fashion. Besides reform, women's clubs also used fashion as a way to showcase creative arts. Fashion shows put on by the CNDA in the 1930s and 1940s featured recitals of music and dance, which were held at the Savoy Ballroom. Suffrage Women's clubs became very active in women's suffrage. Before women had the right to vote, women's clubs needed to partner with sympathetic organizations run by men. The focus on women's suffrage began during the last half of the nineteenth century. In 1868, Kate Newell Doggett, a botanist, helped set up a chapter of Sorosis, which became the first women's group in Chicago to focus on suffrage. Later, the Chicago Woman's Club would help promote suffrage. Other organizations, dedicated especially to suffrage began to be formed after the Civil War. As women's clubs grew, so did suffrage organizations. Women involved in the National Baptist Woman's Convention also supported suffrage. and invited suffrage leaders to speak. After women won the right to vote, women's clubs continued in helping women exercise their rights and how to best use their votes. However, another factor in earning the right to vote was a decline in membership until the Great Depression, when women got together again for charitable work. Temperance Women's clubs such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were involved with advocating the prohibition of alcohol. Both black and white temperance groups promoted women's suffrage. ==Notable clubs==