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Whatever Happened to Republican Feminists?

by Jo Freeman (1996)







For most of this country's history the Republican Party provided a much warmer reception to women, and in particular those women actively working to promote women's rights, than did the Democratic Party. Traditionally, the Republican Party was the more feminist of the major political parties.

Between 1970 and 1973 the parties switched sides; since then they have been rapidly going in the opposite directions in their attitudes towards women's rights and their programs to improve women's situation.

A brief look at history illuminates the profundity of this switch. Most of the women who first demanded suffrage in 1848 were involved in the antislavery movement and vigorously supported the party which freed the slaves.

Suffragists were particularly active on behalf of President Grant's re-election in 1872, William McKinley's campaign against William Jennings Bryan in 1896, and Theodore Roosevelt's campaign against Taft and Wilson in 1912.











The Republican Party saw the importance of women to winning elections even in states where women could not vote. In 1888 the Republican National Committee asked J. Ellen Foster, an attorney and temperance worker from Iowa, to organize the National Woman's Republican Association. While the Populists, the Prohibitionists and other small parties also organized women to work for their candidates, the Democrats did little. It was 1912 before there was a Women's National Democratic League, and it was composed mostly of the wives of Members of Congress.

In the 1890s women took up the job of municipal reform. In New York the West End Women's Republican Association worked to defeat Tammany Hall, while the Democratic newspaper asked "Where are the Democratic Women?" In 1894 and 1896 the Illinois Republican Women's State Central Committee sent Ida Wells-Barnett, prominent African-American journalist, on a lecture tour around the state on behalf of Republican candidates. In California the Republican Party, but not the Democrats, supported women candidates for local school boards and for suffrage.

In 1916 militant suffragists formed the National Woman's Party to campaign against all Democrats in the twelve states where women could vote for President to punish them for failure to support woman suffrage. While neither Party supported a federal suffrage amendment in its platform, Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes endorsed one on August 1, 1916. President Wilson didn't do so until 1918. The women who had supported Roosevelt in 1912 formed the Women's Committee of the Hughes Alliance and raised over $132,000 from 1,100 contributors for their own campaign. They organized and financed a special train to travel throughout the suffrage states holding rallies where women orators mobilized supporters.

Before the days of exit polls it is hard to tell exactly how women voted, but the few analyses that have been done indicate that there was a gender gap in favor of the Republican Party in most places at least until the 1930s. Indeed in the elections of 1952 and 1956 women were six percent more likely to vote for Republican Eisenhower than men were.

Women were particularly active on behalf of Herbert Hoover in 1928. The NWP endorsed him. Moderate suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt campaigned for him. Hoover got as much as 65 percent of the women's vote.

In the 1920s thousands of Republican Women's Clubs were organized throughout the country. The National Federation of Republican Women was founded in 1938 and today is one of the largest women's organizations. While the Democrats made a major effort to organize women during FDR's first two terms, this faded after 1940.

In 1940 the RNC adopted rules requiring equal representation of women on all RNC Committees. Equal representation on the convention platform committee became the rule in 1944, and on all convention committees in 1960.

Through 1968 women had more space in the Republican Party platform and usually had proportionately more delegates at its national convention than did the Democrats.

The GOP endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment four years earlier than the Democrats -- in 1940 -- and took it out four years later -- in 1964. The first three Presidents to support the Equal Rights Amendment were Republicans -- Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford.

During the 1970-72 campaign for Congressional passage of the ERA two of the most active supporters were the President of the National Federation of Republican Women and the female co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

By 1980 all this had changed.









