Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-hgkh8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T01:29:22.425Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Enactment of Mothers' Pensions: Civic Mobilization and Agenda Setting or Benefits of the Ballot?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Cheryl Logan Sparks
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Peter R. Walniuk
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Theda Skocpol
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Abstract

In this Review in 1993, Skocpol, Howard, Lehmann, and Abend-Wein analyzed the rapid enactment of mothers'pension laws in the American states in the 1910s. They concluded that the widespread federations of women's voluntary groups exerted a powerful influence on these enactments even before most American women had the right to vote. Sparks and Walniuk challenge these conclusions, noting that all 10 equal-suffrage states are among the 29 that passed mothers' pensions before 1916, and presenting new measures of suffrage endorsement and suffrage pressures in regression analyses suggesting that women's votes—actual and potential—played a major role in leading some states to adopt mothers' pensions earlier than their normal patterns of legislative change would predict. In response, Skocpol defends the 1993 conclusions. She adduces that the aggregate pattern of enactment of mothers'pensions corresponds much more closely to endorsements by women's groups than to suffrage timing and puts forth reasons to doubt the validity and significance of Sparks and Walniuk's tests.

Type
Controversies
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baumgartner, Frank R., and Jones, Byran D.. 1993. Agendas and the Instability of American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Benson, Jane A. 1977. The Militant Persuasion: Leaders of the National Woman's Party and the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.Google Scholar
Blair, Karen J. 1980. The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914. New York: Holmes & Meier.Google Scholar
Buechler, Steven M. 1986. The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850–1920. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Barbara Kuhn. 1979. The “Liberated” Woman of 1914: Prominent Women in the Progressive Era. UMI Research.Google Scholar
Catt, Carrie Chapman, and Shuler, Nettie Rogers. 1923. Woman Suffrage and Politics: The Inner Story of the Suffrage Movement. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar
Flexner, Eleanor. 1975. Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gray, Virginia. 1973. “Innovation in the States: A Diffusion Study.American Political Science Review 60:1174–85.Google Scholar
Harper, Ida Husted, ed. 1922. History of Woman Suffrage. Vol. 6. New York: Little & Ives.Google Scholar
Harper, Ida Husted, and Anthony, Susan B., eds. 1902. History of Woman Suffrage. Vol. 4. New York: Little & Ives.Google Scholar
James, Edward T., James, Janet W., and Boyer, Paul S., ed. 1971. Notable American Women: 1607–1950, A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 1–3. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kingdon, John W. 1984. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Kraditor, Aileen. 1971. Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement. New York: Anchor.Google Scholar
Lemons, J. Stanley. 1973. The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Leonard, J. William. 1915. Woman's Who's Who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of The United States and Canada, 1914–1915. New York: The American Commonwealth Company.Google Scholar
O'Neill, William L. 1969a. Everyone Was Brave: The Rise and Fall of Feminism in America. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.Google Scholar
O'Neill, William L. 1969b. The Woman Movement. New York: Barnes & Noble.Google Scholar
Porritt, Annie G. 1916. Laws Affecting Women and Children in the Suffrage and Non-suffrage States. New York: National Woman Suffrage.Google Scholar
Rochefort, David A., and Cobb, Roger W.. 1994. The Politics of Problem Definition: Shaping the Policy Agenda. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Scott, Anne F., and Scott, Andrew M.. 1975. One Half the People: The Fight for Woman Suffrage. Philadelphia: Lippincott.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda. 1992. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skocpol, Theda, Howard, Christopher, Lehmann, Susan Goodrich, and Abend-Wein, Marjorie. 1993. “Women's Associations and the Enactment of Mothers' Pensions in The United States.American Political Science Review 87:686–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Jack L. 1969. “The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States.American Political Science Review 63:880–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Jack L. 1971. “Innovation in State Politics.” In Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis, 2d ed., ed. Jacob, Herbert and Vines, Kenneth N.. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill. 1993. New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Winegarten, Ruthe, and McArthur, Judith N.. 1987. Citizens at Last: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas. Austin, TX: Ellen C. Temple.Google Scholar
Wood, Mary I. 1912. History of the General Federation of Women's Clubs. Norwood, MA: Norwood.Google Scholar