Organized Womanhood: Cultural Politics in the Pacific Northwest, 1840-1920 (Hardback)

In Organized Womanhood, Sandra Haarsager shows how women's organizations in the Pacific Northwest became a major social force, imposing education, culture, and political reform to counter others' vision of a Wild West. Meeting in clubs to study great literature or art, women soon found themselves lobbying for better social, legal, and economic status for women, from working women to widows. Their ideas about education and culture counterbalanced the pressures of fast-paced economic and political development in the Northwest.

As they grew in number and confidence, women's clubs set city, state, and regional policies. Well ahead of the rest of the nation, they fought for and gained women's right to vote in their own states and used that victory as a tool to leverage other changes. They shaped communities not through commerce or capital but through the creation of libraries, parks, and institutions. But because they had to work behind the scenes, they seldom gained credit for what they did, and their deeds went unrecorded.

Through reference to a vast number of documents, most unpublished, Haarsager pieces together the history and influence of women's organizations. Profiles of club leaders interspersed throughout the text highlight the achievements of individual women.

Although women's clubs helped create the Pacific Northwest, their contribution has been largely overlooked. Today, however, many of the issues club women raised -- governmental responsibility for welfare, worker and consumer protection, and the need for cultural standards -- are once again at the center of political debate, as is the very nature of the West.