Breaking the Wave: Women, Their Organizations, and Feminism, 1945-1985

Kathleen A. Laughlin, Jacqueline Castledine

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136909221
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Breaking the Wave is the first anthology of original essays by both younger and established scholars that takes a long view of feminist activism by systematically examining the dynamics of movement persistence during moments of reaction and backlash. Ranging from the "civic feminism" of white middle-class organizers and the "womanism" of Harlem consumers in the immediate postwar period, to the utopian feminism of Massachusetts lesbian softball league founders and environmentally minded feminists in the 1970s and 1980s, Breaking the Wave documents a continuity of activism in both national and local organizing that creates a new discussion, and a new paradigm, for twentieth century women's history.

Contributors: Jacqueline L. Castledine, Susan K. Freeman, Julie A. Gallagher, Marcia Gallo, Sally J. Kenney, Rebecca M. Kluchin, Kathleen A. Laughlin, Lanethea Mathews, Catherine E. Rymph, Julia Sandy-Bailey, Jennifer A. Stevens, Janet Weaver, and Leandra Zarnow.

PART I

Mainstream, Leftist, and Sexual Politics

CHAPTER 1

Civic Feminists

The Politics of the Minnesota Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, 1942–1965

KATHLEEN A. LAUGHLIN

In 1947 the New York Times Magazine published a feature article by Margaret Culkin Banning on the burgeoning women’s club movement in the United States. She knew this milieu well. As the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs’ (BPW) national program chair in 1946, Culkin Banning was one of the architects of an intensive lobbying effort to persuade Congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) while there was favorable public opinion about women’s contributions on the home front during World War II.¹ An estimated twelve million women were members of gender-segregated social, religious, or civic voluntary associations in the 1940s, and an impatient Culkin Banning used her platform in the New York Times to assail organized women for failing to transform mainstream politics: “Why, after women have had organizations for twenty-five years which have made it their concern to give women political education, is a woman mayor in some remote small town still national news?”² Enid C. Pierce, a former state president of the Vermont Federation of Women’s Clubs, complained about this public scolding of clubwomen in a letter to the Editor: “But when the clubs do fold their tents, a vast amount of village improvement will steal away with them—such homely but desirable activities as libraries, improvement in schools, establishment of youth canteens, and even garbage disposal.”³ These competing visions of the purpose of women’s public activism—modest or transformative—that played out in the New York Times reveal the difficulties in assessing clubwomen’s contributions to history.

Were clubwomen little more than well-meaning dilettantes, or were they committed community leaders and shapers of public policy—even feminists? The culture and politics of the Minnesota Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs (MFBPW) during and after World War II was decidedly proactive, pro-woman, and feminist. MFBPW members asserted themselves politically in local communities, addressed negative stereotypes of women in the media, and achieved policy victories on the state level that were far more significant than the modest goals Culkin Banning dismissed and Pierce praised in the New York Times. Neither commentator could truly appreciate the implications of women’s full civic participation and what various forms of political engagement would mean on the local and state level. With hindsight, though, historians can reassess the significance of state and local politics and the transformative potential of women’s exercises of autonomy within the repressive climate of the 1950s, especially if we look beyond the waves metaphor. However fierce they were in their politics and identities as women, though, they did not refer to themselves as feminists or to their activities as feminist. Thus, as other women’s historians writing about postwar America, I have modified the term feminist to describe this generation of activists.⁴ Clubwomen were civic feminists: They believed that women’s equality was essential to democracy and national security and considered all forms of public engagement, no matter how modest, as significant exercises in authority and autonomy. Civic feminists linked the suffrage movement and the modern women’s movement, the so-called first and second waves; they continued the rhetorical legacy of the suffrage movement by making claims for women’s rights as essential to the public interest, yet they anticipated a mass-based women’s rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s by unapologetically claiming power and authority in public life in great numbers.

Continuity between first and second wave feminism is not a new idea. For two decades women’s historians have examined how and why women asserted themselves in public life during the 1940s and 1950s.⁵ Yet, the waves metaphor remains the dominant conceptual framework used to determine the importance of women’s activism during and after World War II. “Second wave” feminism is a durable metaphor because it is a picturesque way to describe the tumultuous decade of the 1960s. The transformative politics of 1960s and 1970s feminism is indisputable. Unfortunately, though, the notion of movement resurgence in the 1960s implies that women’s sustained civic pursuits during the interregnum between the suffrage movement and modern feminism was unremarkable, even unmemorable. Consequently, clubwomen have not been recognized fully in recent books on the history of feminism in the United States as agents of social change.⁶ The waves metaphor cannot possibly capture the political life cycle of these women, which evolved from conventional voluntarism to bolder feminist activism that was evident in the 1950s and flourished during the 1960s and 1970s. The BPW and its state branches kept the waves moving over time. It is about time the long history of women’s public engagement replace the chronicle of tides of resurgence.

World War II revitalized a moribund club movement that had lost direction after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920 granting women the right to vote. Clubs drew members eager to participate in the war effort through volunteer work and community leadership. By the 1950s women’s clubs had become large, modern bureaucratic organizations that anticipated contemporary feminist interest groups. The large number of disparate, active women’s clubs that Culkin Banning dissected in the New York Times reflected a desire for affiliation among women who embraced domesticity but also believed in responsible citizenship. We will see in the case of the Minnesota Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs that civic engagement in the 1940s and 1950s was an important precondition for grassroots feminism.

From its inception in 1919 in the midst of a vibrant suffrage movement, the BPW championed full engagement in mainstream politics. However, in the 1920s and 1930s forays into politics were either educational to prepare women for the newly acquired franchise or defensive efforts to repel discriminatory employment policies and practices during the Great Depression. The group endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1937 but did not launch a national lobbying campaign toward its passage until 1946 under Margaret Culkin Banning’s leadership.⁷ Women’s expanded political and economic roles during World War II offered the BPW and other women’s organizations a proactive platform to make wartime gains permanent.

Although politically ineffectual and programmatically adrift during the Great Depression because of dwindling memberships and shrinking resources, BPW clubs were nevertheless established and well-known institutions in local communities that federal and state agencies relied upon to recruit women for the war effort. A significant number of BPW members in Minnesota, especially teachers, attorneys, home demonstration agents in rural communities, and public relations and human resources experts, formulated policies and executed programs for national defense. The War Production Board invited Minneapolis club member Sally Woodward, in charge of public relations at General Mills, and ten other businesswomen to Washington, D.C., for two months to help organize the Women’s Division for Salvage. Woodward wrote two U.S. government publications designed to enlist both male and female voluntary associations in the war effort, “Organizing Your Defense” and “War Work.”⁸ Other MFBPW members worked in regional offices of the War Production Board. State international affairs chair Frances Sains set policies in the Division of Priorities in Minneapolis.⁹ Republican Governor Harold E. Stassen appointed fellow state federation officers to help direct Minnesota’s defense effort on the War Manpower, War Finance, and Consumer’s Interests Committees.¹⁰

It is likely that civilian and military recruitment was a MFBPW project in 1942–43 because Maud Whitacre, as the womanpower supervisor for the Minnesota War Manpower agency, and State of Minnesota Civil Defense Coordinator Frances Schneider enlisted fellow members to meet employment shortages and to assume responsibilities for civil defense. A quarter of the 1,300 members in the state federation eschewed more conventional voluntary pursuits such as war bond drives and service with the Red Cross for leadership positions on community selective service, civil defense, and rationing boards. The Stillwater, Winona, and Northfield clubs claimed to administer the food and gasoline rationing policies of their towns. Fifty-seven members reported heading volunteer recruitment efforts in their communities.¹¹

Successive Republican governors from 1939 to 1951, known for their progressive politics and interest in administrative reform, Stassen, Edward J. Thye, and Luther W. Youndahl considered MFBPW members for appointments. Led by Stassen, governor from 1939 to 1943, who embraced the ideals of Progressive era reform, the Republican Party was able to defeat the Farmer-Labor Party in 1939 by offering an alternative to liberal and moderate voters alienated from the Democratic Party organization dominated by conservative German and Irish Catholics and increasingly distrustful of the economic radicalism of farmer-laborism.¹² Progressive Republicans ended nine years of Farmer-Labor rule during the Great Depression by embracing moderate policies, emphasizing active citizen involvement, and eschewing centralized authority.¹³ Daniel J. Elazar has suggested that “Republicans gave Minnesota a succession of organizationally independent governors.”¹⁴ Encouraging citizen involvement was not only politically advantageous in the context of third-party politics, but necessary in a state where centralized authority was limited. Until the 1960s, Minnesota governors served two-year terms and functioned with a very small number of staff assistants. Governor Thye had only three assistants to help him with the transition from wartime to peacetime in 1945.¹⁵ The MFBPW took full advantage of this political culture to claim power in state politics. There is little evidence that the MFBPW actively supported the Republican Party, however. Rather, the group was more opportunistic than ideological in state politics. As we will see, when the Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFL), a product of a merger between the Democratic Party and farmer-laborism, was on the rise in the mid-1950s, MFBPW officers did not hesitate to work with party members on women’s issues.

An unprecedented commitment to civic leadership during and after World War II engendered a re-evaluation not only of club goals but of women’s place in society. Joanne Meyerowitz has shown how the BPW crafted a “language of reform” from an increasing public awareness of national security during World War II and the Cold War: “By deploying arguments articulated during World War II, the Federation linked enhanced national security to women’s greater participation in government and business.”¹⁶ A resolution adopted at the 23rd Annual Convention of the MFBPW in 1942 supports Meyerowitz’s thesis that national security was employed as a rationale for equal rights:

Because women are called upon to come out of their homes in increasing numbers in order to release men for combat service and help win the war; and because so many will be unable to resume their former jobs after the war is over and because we realize that women have a tremendous stake in the future of our country and the world; and because we know that there is no security for any group unless there is security for all…we believe that the BPW should devote considerable and real thought and effort to securing a world in which there shall be work for all.¹⁷

The state program for 1942, “Mobilize for Democracy,” included a recommendation that each club convene a panel for the first program meeting of the year to reflect upon the purpose of club work and to reconsider the “objectives and accomplishments of women.”¹⁸ Suggested panel questions such as “What has been accomplished?” and “Is the Business and Professional Women’s Club an effective organization?” from the state program chair Frieda Monger encouraged a critical evaluation of programs and goals.¹⁹ Monger reminded members that they should use club programs to assume positions of public of authority: “As clubs which have spent years in study we have a valuable contribution to make to the t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction The Long History of Feminism1
• Mainstream, Leftist, and Sexual Politics
• Civic Feminists The Politics of the Minnesota Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, 1942–1965
• The Legal Origins of “The Personal Is Political” Bella Abzug and Sexual Politics in Cold War America
• “I'm Glad as Heck That You Exist” Feminist Lesbian Organizing in the 1950s
• Women's Global Visions
• Exporting Civic Womanhood Gender and Nation Building
• The National Council of Negro Women, Human Rights, and the Cold War
• From Ladies' Aid to NGO Transformations in Methodist Women's Organizing in Postwar America
• The Politics of Location
• The Consumers' Protective Committee Women's Activism in Postwar Harlem
• “Pregnant? Need Help? Call Jane” Service as Radical Action in the Abortion Underground in Chicago
• Feminizing Portland, Oregon A History of the League of Women Voters in the Postwar Era, 1950–1975
• Barrio Women Community and Coalition in the Heartland
• Feminist Consciousness and Movement Persistence
• “Stop That Rambo Shit… This Is Feminist Softball” Reconsidering Women's Organizing in the Reagan Era and Beyond
• “It Would Be Stupendous for Us Girls”1 Campaigning for Women Judges Without Waving
• Building Lesbian Studies in the 1970s and 1980s
• Conclusion Looking Backward, Looking Forward
• Selected Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index