The Authority of Women in the Political Development of American Public Education, 1860–1930

Abstract

Through a comparative historical analysis of the American states, I show how public education was the original policy field through which white American women became empowered as voters and political officials. Women's changing status within the education profession and “school suffrage” rights are an important and overlooked aspect of women's political history, and the rural orientation of state governments and women's increasing administrative authority as county superintendents and rural supervisors of education was pivotal to women's political empowerment. Women's authority, however, varied across regions and across states, with women's authority especially strong in Western states. I find that women in the field of public education were most empowered where there was a history of school suffrage rights, where administrative offices were elective rather than appointed, and where the power of the state superintendent of public instruction was weak. These findings suggest that democratic institutions, more than economic development or state capacity, were fundamental to women's increasing authority in the policy domain that commanded the largest share of state and local resources at the time.