General Federation of Women's Clubs
In the years following the Civil War, a growing number of women began joining clubs devoted to education, self-improvement, and community uplift. Starting with the 1868 founding of Sorosis, a club for professional women in New York, women's clubs became increasingly popular and spread across the country. Clubs started as places for women, who were almost always denied the higher education available to their brothers, husbands, and sons, to study liberal arts topics like history, politics, and literature. Jane Cunningham Croly founded Sorosis after she had been banned from a banquet held by the New York Press Association, of which she was a member. Although her club was for professional women, clubs formed around a number of different feminine identities: for example, Jewish women and black women often formed their own clubs. In their clubs, women learned to develop their own ideas, take them seriously, and then act on them.
As women taught themselves that their ideas were important, women's clubs often expanded their focus on self-improvement to wider areas of public interest: some clubs were concentrated on charity, some on politics, and others on social reform. Clubwomen embraced an ideology celebrating motherhood, and were able to use maternalist rhetoric to improve their communities.
Women's clubs set the stage for increased political and social participation in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. The Women's Christian Temperance Union was an outgrowth of the club movement, and the Women's Trade Union League and the Young Women's Christian Association used the skills and infrastructure established by clubwomen.
In 1889, Jane Cunningham Croly initiated the founding of the General Federation of Women's Clubs by issuing an invitation to ninety-seven clubs to gather in New York City to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Sorosis Club. That meeting resulted in subsequent meetings which drafted a constitution adopted in 1890, and in the first Biennial Convention in 1892.
"The object of the General Federation is to bring into communication with each other the various women's clubs throughout the world, in order that they may compare methods of work and become mutually helpful." (Constitution as Adopted April 24, 1890)
OCP Resources
General Federation of Women's Clubs. Convention. Official report. Newark, N.J.: General Federation of Women's Clubs, 1892.
General Federation of Women's Clubs. Convention (3rd: 1896: Louisville, KY). Third Biennial. Louisville, KY.: Flexner Bros., 1896.
Croly, Jane Cunningham. The history of the woman's club movement in America. New York: H.G. Allen, c1898.
Club women of New York. New York: Mail and Express Co., c1904.
General Parton, Mabel. The work of women and children in cordage and twine industries. Boston: [s.n.], 1905.
Pennybacker, Mrs. Percy V. "The Eighth Biennial Convention of the General Federation of Women's Clubs,"in Woman's work and organizations. Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1906.
Smith, Mary Gove. Immigration as a source of supply for domestic workers: based upon a study of conditions in Boston. [Boston : Women's Educational and Industrial Union, 1906].
General Federation of Women's Clubs. Souvenir program of the ninth Biennial Convention of the General Federation of Women's Clubs : held in Boston, June 22-30, 1908, by invitation of the Massachusetts State Federation of Women's Clubs. Boston, Mass.: Federation Bulletin Pub. Co., c1907.
General Federation of Women's Clubs. Convention.Official Report. 1910, 1912.Newark, N.J.: General Federations of Women's Clubs.
Wood, Mary I. The History of the General Federation of Women's Clubs for the first twenty-two years of its organization. New York: History Dept., General Federation of Women's Clubs, 1912.
Departments of work. S.I.: General Federation of Women's Clubs, 1914.
Web Resources