Roles of Women

Women played a pivotal role in city life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A lot of the work that women's groups did in the city was based on religious principal and focused on helping troubled young girls and women. In San Francisco, members of the Occidental Branch of the Women's Foreign Missionary Society sponsored rescue homes for Chinese prostitutes. Members gave the women protection from sexual and physical abuse along with helping them to escape the men who exploited them and reenter society. In Salt Lake City, a group called the Industrial Christian Home Association received a subsidy from Congress to provide shelter for women who renounce polygamy and their young children. The Women's Christian Temperance Union sponsored homes for unwed mothers and day and night nurseries for children of working women.

The women that worked in Boston factories faced unspeakable working conditions. The Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics issued a report in 1884 about the hazards working women faced in the city. In button-making factories, the fingers of female workers often got caught under punch and die machines. Employers provided a surgeon to dress an employee's wounds the first three times, but after that, she would have to pay for her own medical care. Women were operating heavy machinery and being exposed to dangerous chemicals and processing materials. Most women in the workforce found it hard to get along with employers and male unionists. An organizer for the Knights of Labor, Leonora Barry, visited mills and factories around the country to highlight women's unique difficulties and condemned the selfishness of the fellow employees and employers who resented women being in the workplace. During the Progressive era, protective legislation for women was controversial. Reformers campaigned for laws establishing minimum wage, regulations against working at night and restrictions on heavy lifting. It was argued that women needed special protections because of their physical frailty. Women's rights activists disagreed because they wanted the same rights as men.

In the 1890's women's suffrage groups began to emerge as significant political forces. The two major national women's suffrage associations, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association, merged to form the National-American Woman Suffrage Association. The movement brought together women around the country but the white native-born Protestant American suffragists excluded the poor, immigrants, African Americans and laboring classes. Women were developing clubs used for political activism that were specifically excluding African Americans despite the fact that they were working for common goals. In 1896, African American women formed their own national federation called the National Association of Colored Women.