THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN AMERICAN FEMINISM: THE NATIONAL WOMAN'S PARTY'S CAMPAIGN FOR THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT IN THE 1920S

This study examines the National Woman's Party's (NWP) campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1920s as an important chapter in the history of organized feminism. The study focuses on the NWP's two major objectives: to create gender equality and female autonomy and to redefine the agenda of American politics to include women's special interests. Based on a careful analysis of the party's official journal, Equal Rights, this study analyzes the goals and tactics of the party while also drawing on other sources to explore the conflicts between the NWP and the rest of the women's movement.;The study also examines the NWP's equal rights campaign within the broader context of American social, economic, and political life during the 1920s. In a society struggling to resolve the tensions created by conflicts between modern and traditional ways of life, the NWP's program proved to be too radical for a time when the cultural context required much stronger ties to customary values.;The debate within the women's movement of the 1920s between the NWP and the social feminist coalition represented a fundamental disagreement over the meaning of feminism in an increasingly modern society. While the NWP presented a bold, foresighted, and radical program calling for a feminist reconstruction of women's roles in both the public and private spheres, its opponents within the women's movement remained tied to more traditional ideas concerning women's roles in American life. In this context, the debate over the ERA, rather than the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, represented the major turning point in the transition from nineteenth- to twentieth-century organized feminism.