Testing the boundaries: Women, politics, and gender roles in Chicago, 1890-1930.

This dissertation examines the relationship between women's political activism and their ideas about gender roles in the years 1890 to 1930 by focusing on the lives and works of four Chicago women--settlement worker Mary McDowell, journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett, clubwoman Madeleine Wallin Sikes, and labor leader Agnes Nestor. The dominant ideology of gender roles at the turn of the century still corresponded to a great degree with the notion that men and women should inhabit separate spheres. However, women like those in this study spent much of their adult lives in activities outside the home aimed at transforming social conditions and public policy. Taking a broader view of the political than many works, this study examines women's consciousness of themselves as political beings and explores the ways in which these women described their activism. Mary McDowell's description of her work as municipal housekeeping both reflected and reinforced dominant views of female roles, but at the same time undercut those roles by greatly expanding women's participation in the public sphere. Madeleine Sikes, by contrast, used the language of the expert to describe her political activities. Ida Wells-Barnett challenged predominant definitions of womanhood by attempting to extend the positive protections of domestic ideology to black women while ignoring its limiting aspects. Agnes Nestor pressed for a broader political role for women and expanded the boundaries of women's roles to include militancy and independence. The separate spheres model has come under attack recently. This dissertation, however, argues for the continuing usefulness of the spheres metaphor, as long as it is applied cautiously, particularly in regard to its relevance in the lives of black and working-class women. While women in the Progressive era pushed against the boundaries of the formal political arena, creating new roles for women in the process, for the most part, they accepted the definitions of womanhood that were predominant at this time. Of the four women under study here, only Ida Wells-Barnett sought a radical alteration of power relations in American society.Ph.D.American historyBiographiesSocial SciencesWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/128701/2/9124055.pd