In the 1920s following women's suffrage, there were expectations of women voting as a bloc to advance policies supporting women. Some successes occurred such as the establishment of the Women's Bureau and the Cable Act granting citizenship rights to married women. However, a conservative backlash arose in response to perceived threats from socialism. The Sheppard-Towner Act which provided health services for mothers and infants was repealed in 1929. Meanwhile, divisions grew between those supporting an Equal Rights Amendment for full legal equality and those wanting to protect policies recognizing women's traditional roles.

1. Women and Politics
in the 1920s
HIUS157/Prof. Rebecca Jo Plant

2. Post-Suffrage Developments
• Expectations of a “woman’s bloc”
• Congressional victories
– Woman’s Bureau (1920)
– Cable Act (1922)
• Gave married women their own nationality
– Motivated in part by reluctance to naturalize immigrant wives
– Women only guaranteed independent citizenship if they married
foreigners “eligible for citizenship” (non-Asians)
– Child Labor Amendment sent to the states (1924)
• Background: Keating-Owens Act (1916) declared
unconstitutional
– Sheppard-Towner Act (1921)

3. Children’s Bureau, 1912
• Background: Many of the accomplishments of
the early 1920s had long been championed by
the Children’s Bureau
• Branch of the Dept. of Commerce and Labor
– Govt agency run by women in pre-suffrage era
– Adm. bureaucracy, but also the embodiment of a
grassroots movement
• Stressed scientific knowledge
– But maternal knowledge produced and by women

4. CB’s activities
• Conducted studies on infant and child
mortality
• Promoted birth and death registration
• Fought against child labor
• Published pamphlets on childrearing;
responded to letters
– Infant Care, 1914 (Mrs. Mae West, mother of 5)
• Importance of schedules
• Emphasized relief for the mother
– After World War I
• Pamphlets increasingly written by male professionals
• Growing concern over infant/child psychology

5. Making a poster for the Children’s Bureau,
1923

6. A Children’s Bureau chart, 1923

7. Sheppard-Towner Act
(1921-29)
• Funded educational efforts to improve
maternal and infant health
• Visiting nurses, exhibits, pamphlets
• Supported by WC and MC women
• Administered by volunteers
• Denounced as “socialized medicine” by the
AMA; as “bolshevism” by the far right

8. Conservative Backlash
• General context: Red Scare
– 1924 “Spider Web” chart
• Adkins v. Children’s Hospital (1923)
– Struck down minimum wage laws for women
• National Women’s Party supports decision
• Child Labor Amendment fails
• Congress kills Sheppard-Towner Act (1929)
– DAR reverses itself
• Diminishing concern about women voters
– Not voting as a bloc; voting in smaller numbers than men

10. Anti- Child Labor Amendment Cartoon (1924)

11. Rise of a grassroots, right-wing
women’s movement
• Women’s Patriotic Committee on National
Defense (1925)
– National umbrella organization of many women’s
patriotic and conservative groups
– Anti-internationalist; pro-militarist
– Also attacked social welfare legislation
– Chilling effect on women’s movement
• Mainstream women’s groups become reluctant to support
reform

12. Split in the prewar coalition of
progressive women
• 1921 National Women’s Party hosts convention
– Alice Paul argues for removing all laws that restricted
women’s freedom
– Florence Kelley and others are alarmed
• 1923 NWP introduces an Equal Rights
Amendment
– “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States
and every place subject to its jurisdiction”
– Virtually all women’s groups opposes it

13. ERA: Pros and cons
• Pro ERA position
– “Protection” classed women with children
– Laws did not really protect women
• Mandatory maternity leave; kept them from
earning more money
• Con ERA position
– ERA would imperil all legislative victories based
on the recognition that women were different
than men

14. Fundamental differences
• ERA supporters valued
– Individual/competition
– Attacked emphasis on sexual difference
– Stressed the right of married women to work
– Women won’t gain equality until they’re treated
equally—the same as men
• ERA opponents stressed
– Needs of families and communities
– Idea of women’s double burden
– Need for a family wage
– Belief that “equal” treatment led to further oppression
of women

15. Gold Star Mothers’ Pilgrimages
• Bereft mothers of WWI dead organize after the war
• GSM lobby for government-funded pilgrimages
• Congress passes bill in 1929
– Same year that Sheppard Towner Act killed
– Government honors “patriotic mothers,” but not the
programs of progressive maternalists
– Reflects shift to a more conservative political climate
• Program sends more than 6,000 to Europe for two-
week stays (1930-1933)

17. Gold Star Mothers
Grant Park,
Chicago, 1918