League of Women Voters

League of Women Voters voluntary public service organization of U.S. citizens. Organized in 1920 in Chicago as an outgrowth of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, it had as its original nucleus the leaders of the latter organization. The league was organized to educate American women in the intelligent use of their newly won suffrage. At its founding the league was primarily concerned with the status and rights of women, but it later broadened its interests to encompass the improvement of the entire political, economic, and social structure of the nation. It has directed its educational and research campaigns to those ends on local, state, and national levels. Formerly limited to female membership, the league voted in 1974 to accept men as full members. With headquarters in Washington, D.C., the organization has some 110,000 members.

League of Women Voters. The League of Women Voters occupies a unique place in American political and women's history. Founded in 1920 as a direct offshoot of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, its program of intensive study, citizenship training, and issue‐oriented nonpartisanship exemplifies one direction that women's political activism took in the postsuffrage era.

Voter education—providing information about candidates and campaign platforms—remains the league's best‐known activity. A Voters Education Fund was incorporated in 1957 to sustain this function. But from the first, the league had a broader agenda. Under the leadership of the former suffragists Maud Wood Park and Carrie Chapman Catt, the organization lobbied for the 1921 Sheppard‐Towner Act, which appropriated funds for rural prenatal and baby care, and the 1922 Cable Act, which guaranteed married women's citizenship rights. During the 1930s, it mobilized public support for Social Security, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and civil service reform. As part of its long‐standing commitment to internationalism, it staunchly supported the United Nations throughout the post–World War II era. Its 1972 endorsement of the Equal Rights Amendment aligned the league with the revival of feminism.

Although men were admitted in 1974, the membership remained primarily white, female, and middle class. Never a mass organization, the league's real vitality lay in grassroots activism, strengthened by a major change in the 1940s when it shifted from a federation of state leagues to an association of individual members. Throughout its history, the League of Women Voters produced a corps of committed volunteers whose contributions to government, especially at the local level, were vital to the democratic process.
See also Twenties, The; Women's Club Movement; Women's Rights Movements.

Bibliography

Louise M. Young , In the Public Interest: The League of Women Voters, 1920–1970, 1989.

Susan Ware

League of Women Voters US political organization. It was founded in 1920 “to promote political responsibility through informed and active participation of citizens in government”. A non-partisan organization, it is comprised of women citizens who distribute information on issues and candidates and campaign to encourage registration and voting.