Singular Leadership: Anna Howard Shaw, single women and the US woman suffrage movement

Abstract

When the Rev. Dr Anna Howard Shaw became president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), her status as a single, self‐supporting woman forced changes in this organization, which had been dominated by economically dependent middle‐class women. Yet Shaw did not fit into either acknowledged category of Progressive Era never‐married women: the privileged and educated ‘new woman’ who chose to work and the working‐class ‘working woman’ who labored out of necessity. This article argues that Shaw's liminal identity allowed her to bridge numerous constituencies and foster the needed changes in the NAWSA while also contributing to the redefinition of American womanhood. The problems of analyzing Shaw's life highlight the need for additional scholarship and theory on the category ‘single’ in women's history.