Women's Centennial Congress

The Women's Centennial Congress was organized by Carrie Chapman Catt and held at the Astor Hotel on November 25-27, 1940, to celebrate a century of female progress.

Women's Centennial Conference in 1940

History

The date chosen was 100 years after the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. That convention had been a gathering of abolitionists from around the world. The organisers were surprised when women were sent as a delegates and the initial reaction was to deny them entry. Women including the female delegates were only allowed in under sufferance and they were forbidden from speaking or voting. This event was, in time, the catalyst for later efforts in the suffrage movement, especially the Seneca Falls Convention. At the Women's Centennial Congress, 100 successful women, most notably Eleanor Roosevelt, were selected to represent female progress in numerous fields,[1] although Catt had failed to get Roosevelt to attend the conference.[2] The 100 women chosen were all American, alive and doing jobs that would have been impossible for a woman to undertake in 1840.[3]

A later commentator evaluated the conference as a media event.[2]

100 Women included (not complete)

Politics

Education

Science

Medicine (not complete)

Theology and Social Service (not complete)

Lawyers (not complete)
  • Catherine Waugh McCullough

Home Economics (not complete)

Business

Miscellaneous

References
  1. John G. Reid, Viola Florence Barnes, 1885-1979: a historian's biography, University of Toronto Press, 2005, page 97
  2. Martha H. Swain (1995). Ellen S. Woodward: New Deal Advocate for Women. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. 157. ISBN 978-1-61703-377-3.
  3. "Image 8 of Carrie Chapman Catt Papers: Subject File, 1848-1950; Woman's Centennial Congress; Women of achievement". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2020-12-18.
  4. "Image 9 of Carrie Chapman Catt Papers: Subject File, 1848-1950; Woman's Centennial Congress; Women of achievement". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2020-12-20.
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