Women in the History of Social Movements in the U.S.
Notes on Some Books
December 12th, 2008
In the 20th and late 19th century United States the most important factors shaping women's efforts to exercise power through social movements were men's behavior the same or similar social movements, government policies, the dominant political atmosphere, and the prevailing gender, sexual, and racial norms of the time period.
Deborah Gray White's Too Heavy a Load begins with the black clubwomen's movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This movement was made of up middle-class black women. They believed that black men had failed in their duty to stand up to racist government policies and increasingly racist norms (such as the growth of segregation, black disenfranchisement, and lynching) and that consequently women had to pick up where men failed and “uplift the race.” They formed settlement houses similar to the settlement houses formed by white middle-class reformers of the time period, but they targeted poor blacks instead of immigrants. Their settlement houses provided useful services for poor blacks, but were also a means by which middle-class women attempted to transmit their values and behaviors to the lower class.
These clubwomen internalized the same norms of middle-class respectability as white middle-class women, including norms of sexual restraint. They believed that if blacks conformed more fully to middle-class standards it would undermine, or at least weaken, white supremacy and, in part, blamed poor blacks for not living up to these standards. There was an element of classism involved, because they were basically assert that they, too, were middle-class and their class privilege should be respected.
According to White, the movement declined in the twenties for several reasons. Sexual norms changed to allow greater freedom, which conflicted with the older “respectable” norms the movement advocated. Greater involvement by black men in movements against white supremacy, such as the Marcus Garvey movement, undermined claims that men weren't doing enough to combat white supremacy and even led to accusations that black women were emasculating black men. A change in government policy, allowing white women to vote, put black women in a similar position as black men. Black women could no longer criticize black men for failing to hold onto the vote for themselves since black women were now in the same boat. Finally, the Great Depression bankrupted movement organizations, including the National Association of Colored Women.
Allison L. Sneider's Suffragists in an Imperial Age shows many similar factors influencing the white women's suffrage movement, especially government policies and the prevailing political atmosphere. One of Sneider's central arguments is that U.S. expansionism and imperialism enabled women's suffrage to become a more prominent issue in national politics than it would have been otherwise. As the U.S. took over new areas it faced the question of how to incorporate newly conquered peoples (such as Mormons, and Indians) into the empire and related issues of rights and citizenship. Suffragists used this debate over citizenship to raise the issue of women's citizenship and right to vote. Sneider uses the cases of the defeated annexation of Santo Domingo, the transition of western territories into states, and the conquest of Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico as examples.
There was no simple correlation between support for women's suffrage and imperialism. Some suffragists supported expansionism / imperialism while others opposed it. Opponents of imperialism could link suffrage and anti-imperialism by equating self-determination for women with self-determination for imperial subjects. Supporters of imperialism could link it with suffrage by portraying imperialism as liberating foreign women from “barbarous” black men.
Government policies, changing racial norms, and changes in the dominant political mood had important impacts on the suffrage movement. When the 15th amendment was passed, a change in both government policy and racial norms, it splintered the movement and caused one section of the movement to abandon racial justice and become increasingly racist. As the dominant political mood of the 1890s and early twentieth century became more racist and imperialist substantial segments of the suffrage movement (as well as the labor movement) adopted similar ideas. Some suffragists used racist and/or imperialist arguments to advance their cause. They claimed that giving white women the vote would enable them to better assist with the “civilizing mission.”
Robyn Muncy's Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform also shows the importance of government policies and the dominant political mood in shaping women's efforts to exert agency within social movements, but it also reinforces the importance of prevailing gender norms. According to Muncy, a number of women graduated from college desiring to become professionals but, in the late 19th century, were barred from almost all professions due to their gender. In response, some of these women became involved in reform movements, including settlement houses like Hull House. Through these movements women took on professional-like positions in areas which they argued were linked to women's 'sphere' (such as childcare) and was therefore a legitimate place for them to be involved.
Originally the women's efforts were separate from the government, but the state began running many of the same services in the early 1900s. As it did so these same women became state employees because they persuaded many men that these services were properly a part of women's 'sphere.' Muncy uses the Children's Bureau, which was staffed and run by women, as a key example. Women carved out their own dominion within progressive reform movements and the government by using the concept of separate spheres to their advantage.
This female dominion had several consequences. One was a significant expansion of the range of occupations women could take. Another was the creation of schools to train more professional women to staff and lead the dominion. Another was the passage of the Maternity and Infancy Act, which Muncy views as a triumph for the dominion.
After 1924 the growth of the Dominion stopped and during the New Deal it collapsed entirely. Muncy argues that the repeal of the Maternity and Infancy act was a reflection of the Dominion's stagnation. She claims that competing male and female conceptions of professionalism canceled each other out. The New Deal was the death blow to the Dominion in part because it delivered all the reforms the Dominion had been advocating. Social programs became mainstream and men played a greater role in them. Child welfare became a subset of the Social Security Administration and ceased to be the special domain of women. Female professionals working in the government relied more on FDR's patronage to obtain jobs than the Dominion's institutions and leaders.
In chapter five of Too Heavy A Load White analyzes two organizations, the National Council of Negro Women and the Women's Auxiliary of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, during the same time period the Dominion was in decline. The NCNW was an umbrella group for many different middle-class black women's groups, primarily sororities and professional associations. The Auxiliary was an alliance of women related to male members of the Sleeping Car Porters' union intended to help the union. Although it considered itself working class and, by white standards was working class, compared to most blacks they were better off and were part of a labor aristocracy, if not a middle class.
Each group took a different approach and, as a result, came into conflict with each other. The NCNW focused on lobbying and attempting to improve employment opportunities for professional black women while the Auxiliary was part of the labor movement. White argues that NCNW women prioritized their gender identity ahead of their racial identity, while the Auxiliary did the opposite. For the Auxiliary, this took the form of pro-working class rhetoric because this was the dominant political tendency among African-Americans at the time. This conflict between racial and gender identities is a central part of how she analyzes the evolution of the movements she examines.
Marcia Gallo's article “Different Daughters” examines an early lesbian rights group, the Daughters of Bilitis. These women's identity as homosexual was obviously a key influence in how they tried to exercise agency through the movement, but the political climate of the time also affected the movement. According to Gallo, they used a strategy of “militant respectability” that tends to be more effective in repressive climates. Especially in their early years the organization adopted a strategy that avoided too much attention and allowed the organization to operate semi-secretly. It published a magazine called “The Ladder.” Ironically, the shift to a more tolerant political climate in the sixties, which aided the homosexual rights movement, caused the organization to fall on hard times and eventually collapse.
Catherine E. Rymph's Republican Women analyzes the role women in the Republican Party from the twenties to the Reagan “revolution.” Among the women Rymph analyzes there is a continual tension between their identity as Republicans and their identity as women. Some sought to faithfully support the party while others prioritized promoting their own issues and women's leadership ahead of the party.
Rymph begins in the twenties, when large numbers of women join both parties as a result of the 19th amendment. These early Republican women's clubs were relatively independent and brought with them a politics of female political crusades inherited from the Progressive Era. Eventually the Party, with the help of more partisan women such as Marion Martin, succeeded in exerting a degree of discipline over the clubs and getting them to focus more on promoting the Party instead of socializing or their own projects. Women were relegated to “Political Housework” in a male-dominated organization. Conflicts over partisan loyalty and loyalty to other principles or identities broke out repeatedly, sometimes in the form of female political crusades. This happened with two major conservative upsurges during the late thirties and forties and again in the sixties, the later led by Phyllis Schlafly. Republican Feminists briefly attained a significant degree of power within the party in the mid-seventies due to the dominant political mood of the time, which was favorable to feminism. However, conservatives defeated them in less than four years and made Reagan the Party's nominee.
Even though she examines women with with different political beliefs, Susan M. Hartmann's The Other Feminists is similar to Rypmh's work in that she examines women who were operating inside male-dominated institutions. In The Other Feminists women in a variety of male-dominated liberal institutions, including the International Union of Electrical Workers, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Council of Churches, and the Ford Foundation, successfully pressured these institutions in a feminist direction. As a result of women's activism these institutions reformed by prohibiting sex discrimination internally, lobbying for feminist policy changes, and funding women's organizations. The exact nature of each institution's changes and activity varied depending on its history and the actions of women within it. For example, the ACLU placed greater emphasis on poor people's reproductive rights because of previous activism for sexual privacy by female members of the ACLU.
An important flaw in Hartmann's work is her overly broad use of the term “feminist.” Although she concedes that most of the women in her work did not identify as feminists, she refers to them as feminists on the grounds that they fought against male supremacy. While using analytical terms to refer to people who did not identify with that label may sometimes be appropriate if done properly, the way Hartmann uses the term feminism obscures the differences between the beliefs and actions of the large range of women who fall within her definition of 'feminist.' At minimum, there are important differences between the women she studies, liberal feminists like NOW, and radical feminists like the Redstockings. Further, there appear to be important differences between the groups of women Hartmann is looking at. The women in IUE appear to advocate what Dorothy Sue Cobble (in The Other Women's Movement) calls labor feminism, while other groups of women advocated their own brand of feminism. Using the term feminism in the broad way Hartmann does, without any qualifying adjective or differentiation between different feminisms, obscures the differences between these various groups. If the term feminism is used as broadly as Hartmann uses it then care should be taken to understand the many different forms feminism can take.
In Annelise Orleck's Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty women's status and identity other than woman also affects their efforts to exert agency through a social movement. Orleck looks at the welfare rights movement in Las Vegas, Nevada from the sixties through the eighties. This movement was predominantly made up of black mothers on welfare. Orleck does not provide a satisfying explanation for why the movement had far more blacks than whites; white welfare recipients have always outnumbered black welfare recipients.
Several important factors affected these women's participation in the movement. Their status as poor welfare recipients meant they derived direct material benefits from the movement. Changes in racial norms and their identity as black meant their were influenced and encouraged by the civil rights movement to fight against white supremacy, a system that was closely connected with their poverty. As mothers these women sought to improve the lives of their children through participation in the movement.
Changes in government policy and the national political mood also impacted the movement. The federal government's War on Poverty and the growth of the National Welfare Rights Movement encouraged these women to become involved in the movement. NWRM organizers first recruited several of these women and encouraged them to form a local chapter of the movement. Local activists took advantage of those War on Poverty programs that were available to them, such as legal services, to aid their struggle. One of the main objects of the movement was to get the state of Nevada to participate in many federal anti-poverty programs that originated in the War on Poverty, such as food stamps, which it previously refused to take part in. When the national political mood became more hostile towards anti-poverty movements, and the rise of the right resulted in the repeal of some Great Society programs, the movement went into decline.
The movement's local in Las Vegas provided it with important opportunities that don't exist elsewhere. Las Vegas's reliance on the gambling and tourism industry meant it was more vulnerable to bad press than other locations. Activists in the movement knew this and used it to their advantage. The “Storming Caesars Palace” of the title occurred literally. Activists marched inside a major casino, Caesars Palace, and disrupted gambling. They also distributed leaflets at airports and engaged in “eat ins.” By hurting elites in the pocket book these actions proved very effective, and the potential bad press reduced the amount of repression these women faced.