Kathleen D. McCarthy
Founding director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society’s founding Director, Kathleen D. McCarthy received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago and joined the history faculty of The Graduate Center of The City University of New York in 1986. She is the author of Women’s Culture: American Philanthropy and Art, 1830-1930 (winner, ARNOVA Distinguished Book Award) as well as many other books, edited volumes and articles on local, national, and international philanthropy, and has lectured on these topics worldwide. Her most recent publications include an edited volume entitled Women, Philanthropy, and Civil Society (Indiana University Press, 2001) and American Creed: Philanthropy and the Rise of Civil Society, 1700-1865 (University of Chicago Press, 2003).
This essay examines the ways in which women historically created parallel power structures through the voluntary sector to parallel the political and economic rights and activities of men. McCarthy seeks to correct the image of women's philanthropy as marginal to the society at large. She demonstrates that American women used the nonprofit sector to achieve opportunities denied them in the halls of government and business centers. The article highlights four avenues for women in the voluntary sphere: institutional development, social reform movements, political action, and charitable contributions.
The first section chronicles the development of benevolent women's organizations. Early groups were formed for very specific charitable purposes, such as the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows (founded in New York in 1797). They endeavored to aid deserving widows in supporting themselves and their children. Often, this aid would come in the form of donations of fabric for the clients to sew into saleable products. At other times, directresses would find schools (or employment) for clients' children, and offer gifts of food, medicine, nursing, and other types of services. In addition, clients received a heavy dose of advice on childrearing, morality, and housewifery. McCarthy points out that although the directresses seem intrusive and exacting to the twentieth century observer, these volunteers often felt real compassion for their clients, and often risked their own health ministering to them in times of epidemic outbreaks. The typical characteristic of these organizations was a constituency devoted to obtaining self-support for women and their families. The directresses had small funds, but invested large amounts of personal attention and labor in these efforts. These women managed to expand the accepted boundaries of female roles outside the home, and learn the business skills denied them in other spheres.
The second section focuses on women's role in social reform. McCarthy highlights the work of the Female Moral Reform Societies in combating vice and the male double standard. Reformers exposed male clients of brothels, seducers, and other transgressors, and boldly entered the most dangerous and hitherto taboo areas of the city. These societies managed to alter the prevailing negative stereotypes of women as irrational and depraved, and in their place they constructed an image of women as moral guardians of society.
Women also used voluntary associations to effect political changes. The author points out that voluntary associations have always played a significant role in making effective and gradual changes in the political arena. Trained in the abolitionist movement to circulate petitions, raise money, and address the public, early feminists overcame their lack of political experience to forge a suffrage movement. This movement included a broad and complex coalition of women, and it harnessed the moral authority and skills that women gained through their charitable and reform work to gain the vote in 1919. Progressive social reform movements and settlements provided another vehicle for women to influence public policy.
The final segment demonstrates the ways in which women use donations to gain influence and create new career opportunities. Although women continued to focus on traditional feminine concerns such as child welfare and education, they created new jobs and institutions for themselves. Some used their donations for settlement houses, and other new female-dominated institutions. Others donated funds to institutions like Johns Hopkins University with the proviso that they open their doors to women.
This essay illustrates how women gained business and political skills in the voluntary sector and used them to make a significant impact on our society. They raised funds, lobbied for reforms, publicized causes, and created institutions. Important distinctions can be made between white, middle-class women's organizations and those run by immigrant and African American women. Scholars have noted that these latter types of organizations stressed mutual aid and tearing down negative stereotypes. While women created parallel structures to those of men, they were often forced to rely on smaller sources of funds, and a highly personal involvement in their institutions. Yet they managed to create opportunities to effect gradual and enduring changes in our country.
McCarthy, Kathleen D. Parallel Power Structures: Women and the Voluntary
Sphere. In Lady Bountiful Revisited: Women, Philanthropy, and Power, ed.
Kathleen D. McCarthy, 1-31. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990.
This abstract is an example of the excellent material that is available on The Center for the Study of Philanthropy of City University of New York site at http://www.philanthropy.org. The Center is developing a series of curriculum guides to examine the ways in which multicultural groups have used their gifts of time and money for the public good.
We encourage you to visit the site where you can order their excellent material. Go to the Table of Contents at the site to order the complete text of the abstract. To see an example of their Curriculum Guides, go to Curriculum Guides and then to the Curriculum Guide Table of Contents to see Philanthropy in American History: the Elite Experience 1890-1940.
