Women's Groups

                The archives of the Humboldt County Historical Society preserve many aspects of our past including the numerous women’s organizations that have thrived here. 

                 Upstairs in the Organization and Families Room, there are six large archival boxes for the Arcata Women’s Club, four for Eureka’s Business and Professional Women’s Club, fourteen for the American Association of University Women, a closet full of records of the Campfire Girls and Girl Scouts, plus boxes for other groups including the Humboldt County Women’s Club, Pocahontas, Pen Women, and the Humboldt Women’s Bowling Association. 

                 Downstairs in the four-drawer Societies and Organization cabinet, there are forty-one files on women’s organizations not counting all the women’s auxiliaries of the county’s many fraternal orders and churches. So, to what do we owe this abundance? The answer is the social position of woman in America and in Humboldt County.

                 In the Victorian age, as previously, the social standard was that “woman’s place is in the home.” There were some exceptions. In the lower classes, women might find themselves having to work in sweat shops like garment factories. Fortunately, Humboldt County did not have many of these. Domestic service was also open to working class women so that maids and cooks could serve the better off. And, of course, there was prostitution which, with ports and lumber towns, we did have in abundance.

                 But these professions were not open to middle class ladies. Young women could work as teachers, fitting the accepted stereotype of the female’s nurturing nature. But once married, proper women were expected to quit teaching and leave bread winning to their husbands. Likewise nursing, another nurturing profession, was permitted, though women were certainly not to become doctors. 

                 This all meant that women had a lot of energy, time and interests available with few acceptable outlets. So, they banded together and formed social clubs, literary groups, fraternal or church auxiliaries, or groups promoting acceptably feminine interests.

                In the early 20th century, Humboldt County saw a flourishing of such groups. Eureka’s Monday Club organized in 1901 and soon joined the California Federation of Women’s Clubs. Fortuna formed its own Monday Club (named presumably for when they met) in 1906. Arcata’s women’s club arrived in 1907, Blue Lake’s in 1908 and Scotia’s in 1910. Others sprang up around the county, and soon the Humboldt County Federation of Women’s Clubs was organized.

                 Besides socializing, these groups focused on issues and activities that were considered suitably ladylike and nurturing including building playgrounds, health care, early schooling and various civic improvements. 

                 Environmental matters were also taken up, but here the treading was trickier because many well-off women were wives of prosperous timber men. Nonetheless, these groups and the Save The Redwoods League were instrumental in the long fight over creating the Redwood State Park as testified by the monument still standing in its grove dedicated to the California Federation of Women’s Clubs, designed with appropriate domesticity like a large hearth.

                 Though controversial political issues were often avoided, many groups also organized to support prohibition and women’s suffrage. In a way, it was women’s achieving the right to vote that began the decline in exclusively women’s organizations. Once women could vote, they could focus their energies on wider spheres. Their opinions were listened to by politicians seeking votes, and women themselves began running for office. Emily Jones, elected Eureka’s mayor in the 1920s, was the first woman mayor in the United States west of the Rockies.

                 By then, fewer occupations were considered inappropriate for women, though middle-class mores remained that a woman holding a job outside the home was humiliating and demeaned her husband’s masculine role.

                 World War II accelerated changes as many women went into formerly male held jobs when men went off to war. And despite the 1950s commercial promotion of the return of the “happy housewife,” changes were underway – particularly since the many labor-saving household devices gave that housewife more free time. By the 1960s, the woman’s lib and other movements only furthered things.

                 The organization records at the Historical Society certainly do not show the disappearance of women’s groups, but they do evidence their decline or expansion into less gender-restrictive organizations. The advent of television and later of the internet enabled women to find entertainment and social contact in contexts other than club meetings.

                 As a record of local social changes, the files of the Humboldt County Historical Society are invaluable. And if the public continues to donate such records, these archives will continue to grow and be consulted well into the future.