League of Women Voters

Also known as: National League of Women Voters

Identification: A nonpartisan volunteer women’s organization encouraging women’s voting and awareness of political developments

Date: Founded on February 14, 1920

Since its inception, the League of Women Voters has worked to end gender discrimination against women, an agenda that it advances in a nonpartisan manner. The formation of the league was considered the end of a seventy-two-year women’s suffrage movement and the introduction of women into active political participation.

The National League of Women Voters was founded by women’s suffrage activist Carrie Chapman Catt to represent the twenty million potential women voters given electoral rights in the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. (The organization dropped the word “national” from its name in 1946.) The league was an offshoot of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In fact, the league’s informal launch occurred at the NAWSA’s 1919 convention in St. Louis, Missouri, when Catt presented her idea for the organization. Its official launch was February 14, 1920, in Chicago, six months before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. Maud Wood Park from Massachusetts became the league’s first president, though Catt had helped establish the league based on her experiences with the NAWSA. Other women activists involved in the league’s formation included Jane Addams, Florence Allen, Mary E. McDowell, Julia Lathrop of Chicago, and Mable Kittredge of New York. A number of men also supported the league’s establishment and mission. Catt reportedly hoped that the need for the league might end in about five years, by which time she expected women’s impact on established political parties to adequately reflect the female agenda and voice. This did not occur, however, and the league continues to exist in the twenty-first century.

The League of Women Voters developed a structure similar to NAWSA and, more broadly, the United States government, in that the national office brought together affiliated state and local leagues. State league leaders or delegates would then elect the national officers. Communication within the group was facilitated by the NAWSA’s popular suffrage publication Woman Citizen, known as Women’s Journal prior to 1920.

The League’s Agenda in the 1920s

League of Women Voters president Park advanced the league’s agenda for the 1920s despite varying perspectives on how to balance gender equality with protections for women. While women had made substantial economic gains during World War I, their social status as a gender had not improved by the 1920s. The league used local town surveys and meetings with political candidates as important mechanisms in crafting an agenda. Among the 1920s league agenda items were improved rights for married women, as well as support for women’s education, public health, employment, safe working conditions, and minimum wage. Other issues on the league’s agenda included child welfare, child labor laws, community improvement, reasonable home prices, morality, human rights, world peace, civic education, improved partisan communication, and voter drives. Working against gender discrimination in the workforce was a priority, as many women who took jobs during the war were being forced to return to domestic work within the home. Many women were relegated to low-skilled, low-pay service and assembly-line work, which many men thought was suitable for “less capable” woman workers. Nevertheless, by the 1920s, increasing numbers of women graduated from college, some even pursuing advanced degrees. Their activism within the league represented an effort to use their intellectual enlightenment for the broader good.

The league’s first legislative success was the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act, signed on November 23, 1921, by President Warren G. Harding. It provided over $2.7 million for child care and maternal assistance, which was in fact relatively little when compared to other government provisions of the 1920s. League member Julia Lathrop championed the act with the endorsement of Democratic senator Morris Sheppard, Republican representative Horace Mann Towner, and various political organizations. The law’s passage seemed to result in improved prenatal care and decreased infant mortality; nevertheless, it ended in 1929 when Congress did not renew its funding.

Another league victory in the 1920s was the Voigt Act, or “Filled Milk Act,” of March 4, 1923, which prohibited the interstate sale of skimmed milk filled with coconut oil as whole milk. In 1920, the Women’s Bureau was established in the U.S. Department of Labor, marking another step toward fulfilling the league’s workforce agenda.

Obstacles to Activism

Women’s political activity slowed after the early victory of women’s suffrage in the 1920s. Despite the league’s arduous efforts, voter turnout among women remained low during the decade. Some historians attribute this to the insincere gestures of inclusion by the major political parties and their perpetuation of strong racist and patriarchal politics. Within the political parties, men removed assertive women from committees, replacing them with less vocal women. The league was also influenced by feminists such as Anne Martin, who thought that women should be more independent of established political parties, which were unlikely to advance a solid female agenda. Catt’s anti-immigrant views, whereby she argued that illiterate male immigrants were a social threat, diminished the league’s potential impact in the 1920s. It was also difficult to encourage party participation while keeping the league’s agenda nonpartisan. Nevertheless, the league was instrumental in getting women elected to state office during this period.

Impact

The efforts of the League of Women Voters in the 1920s helped institute federal social welfare programs through grassroots activism, public education, service learning, and political collaboration. The league’s impact reflects its early broad mission to include both male and female political education and to diminish discrimination against women. League of Women Voters chapters still operate in every state, and its credo of “nonpartisan, but political” continues.

Bibliography

Andersen, Kristi. After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics Before the New Deal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Recounts the victories and struggles of women in politics after the passing of women’s suffrage.

Baker, Paula. “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–1920.” American Historical Review 89, no. 3 (June, 1984): 620–647. Discusses women’s advancements in American politics.

Lemons, J. Stanley. “The Sheppard-Towner Act: Progressivism in the 1920s.” Journal of American History 55, no. 4 (March, 1969): 776–786. An overview of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act, including a discussion of its relation to the Progressive movement of the 1920s.

Sharer, Wendy B. Vote and Voice: Women’s Organizations and Political Literacy, 1915–1930. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004. Analyzes women’s political discourse from the early twentieth century.

Stienstra, Deborah. Women’s Movements and International Organizations. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Explores historical women’s initiatives, with particular focus on their influence in the League of Nations and United Nations.