Science and Suffrage in Bostonian Women's Educational Organizations, 1868-1910

The development of national suffrage organizations in America coincided with a period in which women fought to obtain greater opportunities for scientific engagement. This paper explores the relationship of the women’s suffrage movement to efforts to encourage adult women’s scientific engagement. As a lens into this issue, it examines the archives of two Boston-based women’s organizations that supported female science education: the Woman’s Education Association (WEA, founded in 1871) and the New England Women’s Club (NEWC, founded in 1868). While the WEA generally avoided association with the suffrage movement, the NEWC’s founding members included prominent suffragists like Julia Ward Howe and Caroline Severance. By assessing the rhetoric these groups used to write about women’s science education, we can better understand American women’s visions of the utility of science for women. This paper suggests that women's groups' attitudes towards suffrage shaped the justifications they offered for women’s scientific engagement and impacted the types of engagement they fostered. Indeed, the NEWC encouraged women to use their scientific knowledge to further the public good through political interventions while the WEA encouraged women to be involved in science that was grounded in the domestic sphere.