9
and cultural repertoires of understanding” that give meaning to political action—were redefined.
The remainder of this paper seeks to sketch the fortunes of women’s voluntary associations as
they deliberated about how to best respond to postwar change.
10
My goal is not so much to
document the factors per se that contributed to the postwar transformation in civic life—a
growing body of literature, Skocpol’s work included, has already begun this task. Instead, I am
interested in the friction these factors created for women’s voluntary associations attempting to
adapt to them, and, ultimately, in the implications of postwar institutional change for women’s
political activism and the mobilization of female citizenship over the second half of the 20
th
century. Women’s political activism after World War II was not simply constrained by a “cult of
domesticity” or cultural conservatism. Instead, women’s associations faced a period of
organizational adaptation. For many clubwomen and churchwomen, the golden era of civic
engagement quickly gave way to a crisis of identity; they were anxious to take their place in
national and international domains, but unsure about how to integrate new tactics of political
influence with an historic commitment to local organizing and the practice of good citizenship.
HOW WERE THEY CIVIC? WOMEN’S ASSOCIATIONS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
In the 1950s, members of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC), the
National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC), and the Methodist Woman’s
Division of Christian Service (WDCS), continued, in renewed form, a century-long tradition of
female organizing and local civic participation. All three associations trace their roots to the
“women’s era” of organizing, a movement among American women who entered public life
9
Notable exceptions include John D. Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2002);
Carol Andersen, Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights,
1944-1955 (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Convention