Although there were many strong, executive type women with political expertise in the post-suffrage US, none of them became the vanguard of women’s politics.
- Because of women’s long exclusion form the vote and from political parties, these women had made their own success without help from parties.
- After suffrage, in part because men kept them separate from partisan political movement ( with Democrats and Republicans), these women accepted that separate roles in politics for women was inevitable.
Some women felt most comfortable operating within their own sphere, with women only groups. In these groups women also didn’t have to compete with men for positions of authority.
Some women also had a deep suspicion of electoral politics. It was seen as a dirty job, and part of the ‘man’s world.’
Educated and middle class women for example, were not personally ambitious, and had been taught that their role was to serve others for more idealistic causes.
The winning of the vote did little to change the social perception of women.
3 suffragists, all politically active and who could’ve held elective office show how this perception affected their lives.
All 3 were based in New York City and all active in the Democratic Party. If any women could’ve risen to political prominence during this era, they would have most definitely been a New York democrat.
- Belle Linder Moskowistz (1877-1933)
- One of the most politically powerful women of the 20s. Campaign manager for democratic presidential candidate of 1928, Alfred Smith.
- Served as the only woman on the national Democratic Party executive committee in 1928. Although they lost the election,
- Moskowitz became a nationally known
- Smith offered her several government positions, but she refused them believing her work behind the scenes would give her more power
- than holding office.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
- Wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt- 4 term president.
- During his presidency Eleanor was incredibly involved, a United Nations delegate and a moral force in world politics.
- Born into a wealthy family, but unhappy. Aided the development of her husband’s political career, but found out he was cheating in
- 1918, however decided to stay together.
- 1921, Franklin got polio and withdrew from politics, but Eleanor continued to involve herself in women’s organisations and found a love
- for politics.
- Took up volunteer work for four New York women’s groups: League of Women Voters, Women’s City Club, the Women’s Trade
- Union, and the Women’s Division of the State Democratic Party (of which she edited a newspaper for 1925-28.)
- She became an incredibly well-known figure at both state and national level in politics, but when her husband won the
- governorship in 1928, she stopped all her activities and became Albany’s First Lady.
- She could have run for office and probably won, but it did not occur to her to do so, it was not what women did.
- Frances Perkins (1880-1965)
- First woman to hold cabinet rank in the HofR. However, her post was appointive not elective, the public did not vote for her.
- Better educated than bothy Moskowitz or Roosevelt, with a college degree, she became involved in social work for the New York
- Consumers’ League, wanting greater health and safety for factory workers.
- However, after her husband suffered a mental illness and became unable to work, she searched for well paid jobs and became a State
- Industrial Commissioner in 1918. She entered Roosevelt’s cabinet in 1933.
- When she reflected on her years, she denied being a ‘career woman’ with political ambitions, and that apparently ‘a series of
- circumstances’ and her ‘own energies’ threw her into such an important role.
- Even when in cabinet, she still felt unworthy, and felt that men would resist answering her, dressed and behaved as a typical
- ‘schoolmarm’ to appear less threatening to them and their positions.
- All of these women were incredibly talented and could’ve served as a figurehead for women
- in politics, but were held back by social stigma or by their husbands.Separate Spheres Ideology
1) Gender differences in society are innate, rather than culturally or situationally created.
2) These innate differences lead men and women to freely participate in different spheres of society.
3) Gendered differences in participation in public and private spheres are natural, inevitable, and desirable.
Women are innately different to men and should not involve themselves in a man’s world.
But this was denied to them by men, either they were discriminated against in political circles, or when married, could not mix their role as a wife with politics.
- Younger women looking at these characters, wanted real careers, not to become puppet masters behind the scenes.