What's a club woman?
Title
What's a club woman?
Description
Women’s historians talk about “clubwomen†a lot. What the heck was a club?
(I say “was†not to dismiss the clubs that still exist. Across the 20th c. membership dwindled for reasons inc. shifting leisure time & more professional opportunity for women. Hence the explanation.) 🧵
There isn’t a perfect analogy today: they were more structured than a book club, more social than an Indivisible chapter. They began as polite spaces for women to discuss literature and the issues of the day, at a time when almost no women had access to higher education. Clubs were novel in existing for their own sake - they weren’t auxiliaries of men’s church or political groups, though women built power in those spaces too.
An early founder described women’s clubs as having been created “to give women a space to share ideas as equals.†Peer education led to community service which led to civic engagement. That civic engagement didn’t always include suffrage as an explicit goal - though in many clubs it did. But even those that didn’t embrace voting rights helped train and mentor women to take local action.
If “clubwoman†means anything to you, it may evoke an upper-class woman who could afford not to work and had time to volunteer. Not untrue, but middle-class women also created and joined clubs around the country, most segregated by race and religion.
White Protestant women started their first clubs in the years immediately after the Civil War. The movement grew, and in 1890 hundreds of clubs around the country confederated in the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.
Black women’s clubs were excluded. The National Association of Colored Women was created in 1896. Read more 👇
Stay tuned tomorrow for @NCJW the National Council of Jewish Women, founded at the Chicago World’s Fair!
(I say “was†not to dismiss the clubs that still exist. Across the 20th c. membership dwindled for reasons inc. shifting leisure time & more professional opportunity for women. Hence the explanation.) 🧵
There isn’t a perfect analogy today: they were more structured than a book club, more social than an Indivisible chapter. They began as polite spaces for women to discuss literature and the issues of the day, at a time when almost no women had access to higher education. Clubs were novel in existing for their own sake - they weren’t auxiliaries of men’s church or political groups, though women built power in those spaces too.
An early founder described women’s clubs as having been created “to give women a space to share ideas as equals.†Peer education led to community service which led to civic engagement. That civic engagement didn’t always include suffrage as an explicit goal - though in many clubs it did. But even those that didn’t embrace voting rights helped train and mentor women to take local action.
If “clubwoman†means anything to you, it may evoke an upper-class woman who could afford not to work and had time to volunteer. Not untrue, but middle-class women also created and joined clubs around the country, most segregated by race and religion.
White Protestant women started their first clubs in the years immediately after the Civil War. The movement grew, and in 1890 hundreds of clubs around the country confederated in the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.
Black women’s clubs were excluded. The National Association of Colored Women was created in 1896. Read more 👇
Stay tuned tomorrow for @NCJW the National Council of Jewish Women, founded at the Chicago World’s Fair!
Creator
Daily Suffragist
Source
Date
07/04/2020
Files
Collection
Citation
Daily Suffragist, “What's a club woman?,” Daily Suffragist, accessed April 25, 2024, https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/344.