A "Christian Solution of the Labor Situation": How Workingwomen Reshaped the YWCA's Religious Mission and Politics

Abstract

In 1920, the working-class members of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), numbering some thirty thousand, convinced the Association to endorse a workers' rights platform at the height of the red scare. The YWCA's original mission was to extend the protections of middle-class, Protestant virtue to young workingwomen. However, workingwomen reworked the association's "Christian Purpose" into a tool to radically increase its commitment to labor issues. This article suggests how both social feminism and the Social Gospel were shaped by working-class women. It shows how workingwomen intervened in intra-Protestant debates to insist on equal citizenship within a purportedly democratic, cross-class women's organization. Having begun by seeking to convert workingwomen to evangelical Protestantism, YWCA leaders had found themselves converted—by a mix of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish women—to political activism as an expression of faith.

Conferences With the Engineers: The Innovative Pedagogy and Career of Sada Harbarger, 1884–1942

“…The earlier "adviser" position reflects the YWCA's contemporary drive for a euphemistic "positive health," or sex education emphasizing avoiding venereal diseases, from its 1913 Commission on Social Morality. 20 Harbarger likely identified more with the YWCA's original, conservative middle-class Christian mission than its growing "social gospel" and worker's rights faction (Browder, 2007), given I can find no activity with the YWCA after 1919. 21 Her efficient typed summaries of her secretarial work suggest considerable organizational and financial skill (Harbarger, 1918(Harbarger, , 1919a.…”

Working Out Their Economic Problems Together: World War I, Working Women, and Civil Rights in the Ywca

“…Serving the most working women of any organization, it operated hundreds of industrial clubs all over the country, and held conferences planned by the working women themselves. 29 The Industrial Program was experiencing its own wartime surge in membership and resources. However, since industrial clubs followed the national YWCA's broader segregation practices, Black women were generally unwelcome at club meetings in White associations.…”