Three decades of women’s history in the United States

Am I Not a Woman and A Sister. After the Civil War, women’s organizational efforts became even more ambitious. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, long dismissed as a conservative and conventional Protestnat women’s organization, was actually one of the mainstays of reform activism in the late 19^th cnetury, leading a surprising number of women into radical reforms like socialism. At the same time, women’s clubs were formed and organized into powerful state and national federations, creating a kind of parallel political structure for women excluded from party politics and regular forms of citizenship. So widespread were such organizational civic activities among women that the period might aptly be renamed “the American woman’s era.”

This impressive organizational activity culminated in the