2
organized not to push a particular political cause; rather, they associated for the sake of
associating.
Shortly after reaching new heights in organizational growth, however, the Woman’s
Division begin redefining its mission and experimenting with organizational strategies that
unsettled their civic roots. Within less than a decade, the WDCS began sending a paid
“legislative representative” to Washington, D.C. to carry churchwomen’s interests to political
elites. By 1963, they staffed an office at the Church Center for the United Nations (CCUN), an
institution that the Woman’s Division itself helped to establish across the street from the UN. In
1972, the WDCS was renamed the United Methodist Women (UMW) to reflect what
churchwomen hoped would become a newly “inclusive organization”; at this time, though
membership was beginning to show signs of decline, they employed a staff of 26, operated a
legislative affairs office in Washington, D.C., and started holding “consciousness raising”
sessions to discuss things like Betty Freidan’s Feminine Mystique. And, in the early 1980s,
leaders of the Division turned their attention to gaining “NGO” status with the UN in order to
become part of a growing sector of non-governmental organizations and a more effective partner
with their international sister, the World Federation of Methodist Women.
This was a remarkable transformation. In approximately three decades, the primary
organization of Methodist womanhood had been transformed from a “do everything,” mass
membership association focused on civic action and public education, to a highly
professionalized, centralized, and more explicitly political organization, self-consciously
redesigning itself (at least among the leadership) to become an NGO in an increasingly
internationalized civic realm. Although not all groups embraced change as readily, a similar
story could be told for other women’s civic associations after World War II. “Let organized
Convention