Women's Christian Association Research Articles

AihuaZhang: The Beijing Young Women's Christian Association, 1927–1937: Materializing a Gendered Modernity. Lanham, Boulder, New York and London: Lexington Books, 2021; pp. xxvi + 165.

Journal of Religious HistoryEarly View BOOK REVIEW Aihua Zhang: The Beijing Young Women's Christian Association, 1927–1937: Materializing a Gendered Modernity. Lanham, Boulder, New York and London: Lexington Books, 2021; pp. xxvi + 165. David W. Kim, Corresponding Author David W. Kim [email protected] Australian National University/Kookmin University, SeoulDavid W. Kim ([email protected]).Search for more papers by this author David W. Kim, Corresponding Author David W. Kim [email protected] Australian National University/Kookmin University, SeoulDavid W. Kim ([email protected]).Search for more papers by this author First published: 23 April 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9809.12966Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

DIN ISTORIA ASOCIAȚIEI CREȘTINE A FEMEILOR DIN ROMÂNIA ȘI LIDERELE EI

The Women Christian Association was founded in 1919, under the patronage of Queen Mary, with the help and guidance of some foreign secretaries, who arrived in the country after the Great War. According to its Statutes, the aim of the Association was to provide young girls with physical, intellectual and moral education. The headquarters of the Association was in Bucharest, and other branches were opened in Iași, Sibiu, Constanța, Craiova, Arad, Timișoara and Cernăuți. The Association organized dormitories for schoolgirls, tailoring workshops, restaurants, canteens, educational circles, schools, courses, libraries, and summer camps. In its headquarters in Bucharest, Popa Rusu street no. 13, it organized constantly courses, conferences, concerts and even cinema. The Association continued to be active during the Second World War, when it carried out an extensive program of assistance to war refugees from Poland, Bessarabia, Northern Bucovina and Northwest Transylvania. The Association had a Christian flag and the members wore a white uniform with blue ties. Its members, belonging to different social and professional categories, were active and devoted. Among its devoted and dedicated leaders, one has to mention Queen Maria – honorary president – and Princess Ileana - president of the Blue Triangle circles. Maria Filipescu, Natalia Slivici, Ioana Burileanu and Elena Orghidan were active presidents, and Alice Grunau Dimăncescu, Alice Voiculescu, Bucura Dumbravă were special members of the Association.

A White Liberal College President in the Jim Crow South: Guy Herbert Wells and the YWCA at Georgia State College for Women, 1934–1953 by Sandra E. Godwin

Reviewed by: A White Liberal College President in the Jim Crow South: Guy Herbert Wells and the YWCA at Georgia State College for Women, 1934–1953 by Sandra E. Godwin Leah LaGrone A White Liberal College President in the Jim Crow South: Guy Herbert Wells and the YWCA at Georgia State College for Women, 1934–1953. By Sandra E. Godwin with Helen Matthews Lewis. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2021. Pp. xviii, 238. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-88146-790-1.) What began as a project to explore the history of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) at Georgia State College for Women (GSCW) was transformed into a story about college leadership in the Deep South during the 1930s and 1940s. Author Sandra E. Godwin, a professor of sociology at Georgia College and State University, examines the racial politics of conservative Georgia and the liberal leanings of a white college president. She shows that GSCW president Guy Herbert Wells was determined to balance student demands for racial tolerance, which matched his own politics, with pressures from the racist Georgia politicians who held his job in their hands. [End Page 797] Godwin begins with a focus on the progressive politics of several YWCA chapter leaders at GSCW in the 1930s and 1940s. For example, she shows how Marguerite Jernigan, YWCA president in 1938–1939, wrote an article for the student newspaper, The Colonnade, calling attention to white supremacy. Jernigan observed that Georgia's poll tax "arose not immediately following the Civil War as many people think, but rather . . . was a result of white supremacy conventions that came in the late 1890s and early 1900s" (p. 31). Several other YWCA leaders on the GSCW campus similarly pushed "beyond the boundaries of the status quo" regarding racist politics in the South, examining connections between racism, capitalism, and poverty (p. 31). YWCA members also visited Black institutions and attended interracial conferences, sometimes staying overnight in the same venues as Black students. Their actions blatantly subverted the norms of southern segregation. That is, until President Wells demanded that the organization proceed with caution so that he would not have to contend with the wrath of racist politicians. The book intersperses the history of the college's radically progressive chapter of the YWCA with analysis of Wells's responses to its activism. Godwin argues that focusing on his balancing act gives us a clearer picture of complex southern politics. She examines how a white liberal in the Deep South allowed YWCA leaders to challenge the demands of Georgia politicians with the power to fire him. Godwin describes a comment made after Wells supported the YWCA chapter's attendance at an integrated conference in the 1940s. Georgia House Speaker Roy Harris, who had been appointed to the University System of Georgia Board of Regents by the vocal segregationist and staunchly anti–civil rights governor Herman E. Talmadge, reportedly said, "If ever there was a traitor to the white people of Georgia, it is Guy Wells" (p. 159). Wells, however, did sometimes succumb to the political pressure and forced the YWCA to curb its participation in interracial politics. Godwin shows that whatever Wells's personal politics, he strained to play the middle so that he could remain in his position at the university. The histories of white liberalism and white radical progressivism in a deeply segregated state revealed here are fascinating. Godwin argues that the book is primarily about college leadership. Nevertheless, it is the story of a racially progressive YWCA that called to task systemic racism in the 1930s and 1940s that really stands out. The book provides rich historical context for interracial politics by showing how groups like the YWCA spoke out against white supremacy. Although a white man is on the cover of the book, A White Liberal College President in the Jim Crow South: Guy Herbert Wells and the YWCA at Georgia State College for Women, 1934–1953 reveals a new history in the actions of white women subverting a racist and patriarchal system. Godwin's book is an excellent starting point for a needed history on the politics of the YWCA in the South. Historians can also build on stories of interracial...

Assessing the Impact of an Intervention Project by the Young women's Christian Association of Malawi on Psychosocial Well-Being of Adolescent Mothers and Their Children in Malawi.

Adolescent mothers in Malawi face psychosocial challenges such as low resilience level, low self-esteem, poor maternal-infant interaction, and exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV). Children of adolescent mothers often face numerous risks such as low birth-weight, stunted growth, infant death, low school enrolment, increased grade repetition, and dropouts that put them at greater risk of poor developmental outcomes and socio-emotional problems. This study assessed the impact of components of a community project conducted by the Young Women's Christian association of Malawi in providing psychosocial support to adolescent mothers and their children. The goals of the project were; (1) to improve early childhood development in babies born to adolescent mothers; and (2) to enhance the psychosocial well-being of adolescent mothers (self-esteem, resilience stress, and parenting skills). This descriptive mixed methods evaluation study comprised an intervention and control groups of adolescent mothers respectively. The project had 3 centers in southern region districts of Malawi. Target population was adolescent mothers 18 years of age and below. At baseline we enrolled 267 mothers and at the end of the project we had 211 mothers. The project involved monthly meetings with adolescent mothers imparting knowledge and skills and early childhood education activities. From July 2017 to June 2019, 58 sessions were conducted. In the first year the control group had no meetings, however they received the intervention in the second year. Overall results in the intervention group showed statistically significant increase in knowledge on parenting skills (p < 0.01), nutritional practice (p < 0.01), motor skills and cognitive functions in children (p < 0.01) as well as expressive language and socio-emotional capacities in children (p < 0.01), while the change in confidence and psychosocial well-being was not statistically significant (p = 0.8823). Community projects such as these enhance parenting skills and improve development of children born to adolescent mothers. Improving psychosocial support is complex and requires further research and a more holistic approach.

Using Evidence and Data to Design an Intervention in the Project Community Model for Fostering Health and Wellbeing Among Adolescent Mothers and Their Children.

In this paper, quantitative and qualitative measurements of maternal psychosocial wellbeing were utilized in three districts in Malawi that guided decision-making to increase the wellbeing of adolescent mothers and promote the healthy upbringing of their children. The 1-year design stage of the study relied on several sources of information: literature search, prior project implementation of similar projects, discussions with officials at the Malawi Department of Social Welfare, and observation visits in the targeted districts. The approaches for collecting data mentioned were triangulated for the development of a baseline survey. The baseline survey generated systematically collected data of the experiences and recalls as well as the missing data from the preliminary evaluation of the existing data. The baseline data gave the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) insight on the type of intervention required in order to give a greater and more holistic effect on the beneficiaries. We also discuss the lessons we learned as to whether the assumptions we had made at the onset were correct. If they were not correct, we explained the measures we took to correct the design or implementation of the project. Finally, the data provided benchmarks for project monitoring and evaluation.

Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality: Women's Activism in Kansas City, 1870 to 1940 by K. David Hanzlick

Reviewed by: Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality: Women's Activism in Kansas City, 1870 to 1940 by K. David Hanzlick Sara Egge K. David Hanzlick, Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality: Women's Activism in Kansas City, 1870 to 1940. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2018. 316 pp. $50.00 (cloth). K. David Hanzlick examines how women in Kansas City claimed the public sphere and became political agents between 1870 and 1940 in his book Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality. As the title suggests, these women did so by organizing for charity, agitating to combat evils in society, and campaigning for political rights like suffrage. While they approached this tripartite process in ways that resembled their eastern counterparts' strategies, Kansas City's women diverged in how they engaged in this activism. Hanzlick argues that Kansas City's location at the intersection of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers and along the border of one slave and one free state helped its development as a western commercial metropolis and fueled a potent political mix. Business and agricultural promise lured people to a place rife with simmering sectional antagonisms. It was this context that made unification among reformers paramount. It also encouraged women to build public reputations as reformers and leaders in their community. [End Page 190] Civic engagement and shared desire for economic growth healed divisions and established bonds of loyalty. Along with an introduction and conclusion, the book contains five chapters that detail the civic engagement that politicized women and earned them public reputations. Hanzlick's reliance upon newspapers, census records, city directories, and other primary sources in Kansas City–based archives to tell his story allows him to delve deeply into the details. Hanzlick follows "consistent Kansas Citians" and newcomers; the latter typically hailed from the northeast, came from Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish religious backgrounds, and supported economic development amid dense social networks. Chapter 2 explains how many of these upper-class women joined a single relief agency, the Women's Christian Association (WCA), in the 1870s. While benevolence to the poor seemed the primary focus of the WCA, Hanzlick notes that members pursued a variety of reform activities to end other social ills like prostitution and to secure the right to vote. Over time, the membership became increasingly elite and focused solely on benevolence until a general relief agency, led by men, appeared in 1880. Kansas City's male leaders adopted an ambivalent approach to the poor from 1880 to World War I in the wake of dramatic population growth and unfettered corporate capitalism in the city. The regional hub attracted transient workers, and disagreements emerged about how to contend with such a large population of poor people. Hanzlick places these debates in a broader context in which reformers wrestled with questions about individual or structural blame. In chapter 3, he examines the male-led Board of Public Welfare, a Progressive-Era entity begun in 1910, telling the story of how these reformers struggled to discard notions that character building, rather than major structural change, was the key to eliminating poverty. Chapter 4 takes up the narrative from chapter 2, locating reform in a variety of local chapters of national organizations like the Women's Christian Temperance Union, General Federation of Women's Clubs, National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, Young Women's Christian Association, and Catholic Ladies' Aid Society. While these groups embraced similar reforms—such as prohibition, woman suffrage, and consent laws—they worked separately. Chapter 5 carries the narrative to the eve of World War II, finding that unlike the divisions that plagued women at the national level, women in Kansas City remained united. They sought political participation in local governance by supporting campaigns for municipal reform, engaging in party politics, and running for local offi ce. [End Page 191] Benevolence, Moral Reform, Equality not only successfully traces the history of women's activism in Kansas City, but it also speaks to histories of social welfare and municipal reform that included men. Some chapters, like chapter 3, pursue questions about the development of midwestern metropolitanism more so than women's activism. Hanzlick also rightly argues that his work opens doors to further investigations and that scholars should treat his...

Lois Lenski, Storycatcher by Bobbie Malone

Reviewed by: Lois Lenski, Storycatcher by Bobbie Malone Rebecca L. Godwin Lois Lenski, Storycatcher. By Bobbie Malone. ( Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Pp. x, 323. $26.95, ISBN 978–0-8061–5386-5.) Five decades of America's twentieth century come alive in this readable, meticulously researched, and well-documented first full-length biography of Newbery Award–winning children's author-illustrator Lois Lenski. Historian and educator Bobbie Malone traces the evolution of Lenski's work and ties her determination to create her art to the economic and social realities that surrounded women and educational movements, especially between the 1920s and the 1960s. Malone's narrative proves that Lenski, a talented and energetic documentarian of American life who was part of the 1920s surge in children's book publishing, aimed to promote empathy and a sense of social justice in young readers. Malone follows Lenski from her 1893 birth in Ohio to her death in 1974, framing the author's achievements in the context of women's expected place in American society. After earning an education degree, Lenski refused a teaching [End Page 204] job and instead went to New York City in 1915, where she lived at a Young Women's Christian Association branch for women interested in the arts. In 1921, at the age of twenty-seven, she married her mentor, muralist and illustrator Arthur Sinclair Covey, whose first wife had died soon after giving birth to their second child. Throughout the book, Malone describes Lenski's fulfilling life wherein she quietly contested her domestic roles and worked tirelessly to realize her professional dreams. As her husband's painting commissions dissipated during the Great Depression, Lenski became the primary breadwinner, but she never claimed that title herself. In her autobiography and in her letters to friends, Lenski shared that her husband expressed no interest in her books. Yet she pressed on and managed her own professional affairs, earned money from magazines with perfect-mother-myth satirical essays after she bore a son at age thirty-five, networked for field research, and published and illustrated one hundred books. Lenski's fine illustrations for her own and other writers' children's books added to her success, but it was her respectful portrayals of diverse ethnic groups and working-class families—including migrant laborers, sharecroppers, and coal miners—that broke new ground. Determined to provide a realistic view of America, Lenski wrote Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison (1941), an acclaimed historical novel for middle-grade readers that gave an "alternative perspective of Anglo-American Manifest Destiny" with its sympathetic portrayal of Native culture (p. 130). The book started Lenski on the path to writing her American Regional series and Roundabout America series. She wrote while living among everyday people around the country and learning local cultural traditions, work rituals, and dialects, catching stories that became, for instance, Bayou Suzette (1943), Strawberry Girl (1945), and Corn-Farm Boy (1954). Lenski's collaboration with teachers and schoolchildren developed into "'invitational writing'" as she responded to people's requests to "write about them and their region" (p. 166). Lenski conducted extensive research and sometimes included too much historical detail for her editor's taste. Nevertheless, she created books that teachers used in social studies curricula in upper elementary grades to help readers understand the importance of place in people's lives. Malone gives a balanced view of Lenski's work, citing negative reviews and sharing honest assessments of Lenski's unsuccessful books. Malone talked to librarians, educators, children's literature scholars, Lenski's family members, and people who were involved with Lenski's field research as children. She read the papers that Lenski left to more than two dozen libraries and archival repositories around the United States. By analyzing Lenski's influences and by including photographs and illustrations, Malone's chronological study presents Lenski as a forward-thinking American artist in her time. Historians as well as scholars and enthusiasts of children's literature will find this book insightful, and biographers and children's book authors can learn much from the writing and research methods of both Malone and her subject, whose inclusive ideas about democracy influenced generations. [End Page 205...

You have to judge on the spot: Just-in-time community art education

ABSTRACTThis proposition concerning “just-in-time” teaching was initiated in the field where the practices of two student-teachers have inspired ongoing and continued study into community art education as a site of creative and innovative teaching and learning that contributes to forms of public pedagogy. Informed by the year-long practicum assignment of Georgina and Makini at the Young Women's Christian Association, or as it is commonly known, the YWCA, and as part of a larger ethnographically-informed study, this article is a conversation about specific aspects of their teaching experience that were unique—that is, how they learned to operate in ways akin to just-in-time models of curriculum and instruction, but with an unexpected and unintended twist in teaching practice. In turn, research considerations began to shift during the course of the study to reflective practice as a source of information in which subjective understandings tentatively advance and add to wider professional development of students becoming teachers, and to how such practice might initiate more iterative, fluid, and interactive methods of sharing capacity building in non-formal learning sites like community art education.

Becoming a Hybrid Organization: When Traditional Nonprofits Found New Ventures

IntroductionA growing number of traditional nonprofit organizations are embracing free enterprise by founding for-profit business ventures (e.g., Kerlin, 2006; Khieng and Dahles, 2015; Park and Kim, in press). As an example, the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a 150-year old nonprofit focused on empowering women by providing services such as affordable childcare, afterschool youth programs, job training, and crisis counseling. In recent years, however, numerous local associations of the YWCA have founded for-profit new ventures, including catering and food delivery services, cafes, hotels, resale stores, and even an e-commerce platform.A nonprofit's decision to found a business venture represents a type of entrepreneurship: the creation of organizations addressing societal problems through business methods. Social is attracting increasing attention, interest, and resources (e.g., Dees, 1998; Mair and Marti, 2006). Although it is not a new phenomenon, in the past decade an eruption of scholarly and practitioner-oriented work has been devoted to the topic, which reflects the exponential growth in the number of entrepreneurs and newly created ventures (e.g., Dacin, Dacin, and Tracey, 2011; Short, Moss, and Lumpkin, 2009). Moreover, funders of all types, from angel investors to philanthropic foundations to grant-giving government agencies, are providing an increasing amount of resources to entrepreneurs (Austin, Stevenson, and Wei-Skillern, 2006). Consumers have also begun to actively seek goods and services produced by ventures (Hibbert, Hogg, and Quinn, 2005).Despite the flourishing interest in entrepreneurship, scholars have been slow to examine nonprofit founded ventures (NFVs) as a unique organizational form. Instead, research has centered on stand-alone ventures, such as TOMS Shoes, which are founded as independent entities rather than by existing organizations (e.g., Estrin, Mickiewicz, and Stephan, 2013; Ruebottom, 2013). Other scholars have provided overviews of this trend in the nonprofit sector but have not examined the phenomenon empirically (e.g., Dees and Anderson, 2003). This represents an important omission in prior work because it cannot be assumed that findings and theory generated from studying independently founded ventures necessarily have a correspondence to ventures founded and managed within the boundaries of an existing nonprofit organization. Yet, by not examining NFVs as a discrete phenomenon, several questions remain unexamined. Specifically, it is not clear what motivates nonprofits to found these types of business ventures, how organizational characteristics influence venture success, and what characteristics of NFV managers are most critical to the NFV's long-term viability.To address these questions, this study utilized an exploratory, partially inductive research design based on semi-structured interviews with 33 nonprofit directors, NFV managers, and other ancillary participants in the sector (e.g., resource providers). The study reveals why and how nonprofits are turning to the creation of business ventures to further their aims. An increased understanding of this phenomenon represents a contribution not only to entrepreneurship, but to work at the intersection of and non-profit management.The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. First, a brief overview of and NFVs is provided, including a discussion of motives for each. Nonprofit trends that impact NFVs are presented, with particular emphasis on the growing market orientation of the nonprofit sector. The study's research design and method are then explained, and findings are presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications, limitations, and future research directions.Literature reviewSocial and nonprofit founded ventures (NFVs)Overview of entrepreneurshipSocial is a phenomenon that dates back to the community movements, mutual benefit associations, and cooperative enterprises of the early 19th century (Rispal and Boncler, 2010); however, the term social entrepreneurship was not coined until the mid-1970s and not popularized until the 1990s (e. …

The Travelers' Aid Society: Moral Reform and Social Work in New York City, 1907–1916

The Travelers' Aid SocietyMoral Reform and Social Work in New York City, 1907–1916 Eric C. Cimino In director James Gray's recent film The Immigrant (2014), a Polish immigrant named Ewa is awaiting deportation at Ellis Island when she encounters a man who claims to be a worker for the Travelers' Aid Society. The man, Bruno, promises Ewa a safe place to stay and a good job if she will leave the island with him.1 Having no other options, she agrees. Bruno escorts her off the island to an apartment on the Lower East Side, where Ewa senses that something is not right. Her initial suspicions are confirmed when the next day Bruno takes her to a seedy burlesque theater where she is put to work as a seamstress. He later pressures her into dancing for the theater's male patrons and, through constant psychological manipulation, ultimately convinces her to work for him as a prostitute. Ewa's immigrant American dream now shattered, she must find a way to survive amidst New York City's underworld. In reviews, film critics have presented a confused picture of Bruno's identity. For instance, A. O. Scott writing in the New York Times asserts that Bruno is a "well connected representative" of the Travelers' Aid Society.2 Others have called him an imposter who simply poses as an aid worker from a group that may or may not exist.3 Readers and film viewers may wonder if the Travelers' Aid Society has a history in New York and, [End Page 34] if so, was it a front used to recruit women into an illicit world of burlesque dancing and prostitution? The Travelers' Aid Society of New York (TAS) did indeed exist. And, it was not a front; rather, it was established to prevent women from falling victim to schemes similar to Bruno's. The prominent philanthropist, Grace Hoadley Dodge, founded the TAS in 1907 as a response to the moral and sexual dangers that she believed confronted single women (immigrant and native-born) as they entered American cities in search of work and leisure. Moral reformers, like Dodge, assumed that traveling women who were adrift from their family and community existed on the "border line of tragedy," where the slightest misstep could result in a downward spiral that culminated in white slavery, the coerced prostitution of white women.4 To prevent the tragedy of white slavery, the TAS provided social work to at-risk travelers at New York City's train stations and piers. Much of its work involved escorting travelers away from "danger zones" and to locations it deemed safe and respectable, such as the accommodations of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) and the Young Women's Hebrew Association.5 It also helped arriving travelers connect with family members and departing travelers to catch their trains and steamships. In more dramatic instances, the TAS separated female travelers from men who were judged to be imminently dangerous. When writing about social welfare and reform projects, like travelers' aid, scholars often invoke theories of social control and discipline. They claim that social welfare is used to compel working-class and poor people into behaving according to middle-class values for the sake of maintaining the industrial order and the state.6 However, a rival interpretation also [End Page 35] exists that presents welfare as a dynamic field that incorporates a wide-range of actors who have competing ideas about how to best serve clients and address social problems. This literature maintains that in addition to having a history of discipline and control, social work also has a tradition of benevolence and empowerment.7 This essay draws from both perspectives. It takes seriously the Travelers' Aid Society's claims to protect and assist travelers, while also acknowledging the organization's disciplinary features. It argues that the TAS's coercive elements were moderate during its period as a women's organization (1907–1910), which allowed members of the group, more often than not, to provide valuable aid to travelers. Travelers who could, for example, use assistance navigating a crowded station, locating a city address, or finding a job accepted travelers' aid...

Christianity and the Rise of Western Physical Education and Sport in Modern China, 1840–1920s

Christianity, as practised by missionary educational institutions and the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), was an important means of introducing and popularizing Western physical education and sport in modern China from 1840 to the 1920s. The research investigates how and why missionary educational institutions and the YMCA and YWCA contributed to the rise of physical education and sport in modern China. This analysis examines the activities of missionary educational institutions and the YMCA and YWCA in China during this period to uncover what really contributed to pave the way for Christianity, as well as led to this rise of Western physical education and sport in modern China from 1840 to the 1920s.

WORKING OUT THEIR ECONOMIC PROBLEMS TOGETHER: WORLD WAR I, WORKING WOMEN, AND CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE YWCA

AbstractThis article examines how a group of Black and White YWCA staff members seized the opportunities of World War I to advance a racial justice agenda through Young Women's Christian Association programs for working women. First, they created YWCA program work for thousands of Black working women that paralleled the YWCA's Industrial Program, which followed YWCA segregation policies. Second, they made claims for social justice based on Black women's labor contributions, in contrast to both earlier reformers' focus on elite Black women and other wartime activists' focus on soldiers' service. Finally, in a period best known for White people's violent resistance to Black advances, they fostered a program culture and structures that encouraged White working-class women to view African American coworkers as colleagues and to understand racial justice as part of a broader social justice agenda. Arguing that interracial cooperation among working people was crucial to social progress, they made African American laboring women and White working-class allies both symbolically and literally crucial to wartime and postwar civil rights efforts. Their efforts contribute to our understanding of the changing discourse of “respectability” and the impact of World War I on the Black Freedom Struggle.

Celebrating the Tercentenary in Wartime: J. M. Barrie's Shakespeare's Legacy and the YWCA in 1916

This article isolates an instance of the 1916 Shakespeare Tercentenary celebrations to reveal some of the conflicts and tensions surrounding the appropriation of a national poet during the Great War – appropriation, not of his works, but of his iconic presence and his value as cultural capital with symbolic power. On 14 April 1916, a one-act play by J. M. Barrie was produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, for the benefit of the YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association). Shakespeare's Legacy, a skit in which the Swan of Avon is presented as a lad from Glen Drumly, was part of a charity matinée destined to raise funds for hostels, canteens, and rest rooms that female war workers were much in need of. Barrie's one-act play is not included in any edition of Barrie's collected works and has never been reprinted since it first appeared in print in 1916. Shakespearean scholars, who have paid attention to Barrie's speech, “The Ladies' Shakespeare”, have so far ignored Shakespeare's Legacy, a play that questions received notions of national identity, cultural value, and gender relations. Not even Schoenbaum's comprehensive Shakespeare's Lives (1991) records this Scottish Shakespeare that poses a challenge to the Englishness of the British bard. This article also explores further connections between Barrie, Shakespeare, and the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), paying particular attention to Barrie's collaboration with another charity matinée for YMCA's huts for soldiers which combined entertainment and moral indoctrination, just like the Bloomsbury “Shakespeare Hut” that was erected, around the time of the 1916 celebrations, on the plot of land originally acquired for the British National Theatre.

A Social Gospel for India

This article discusses the ways that secretaries in the U.S. Young Women's Christian Association (USYWCA) used the Social Gospel to create a type of imagined community, which I call Y-space, in India. In the United States, USYWCA secretaries emphasized Social Gospel ideals such as the personal embodiment of Christ-like behavior, inclusivity, and working for the progress of society. In India, USYWCA secretaries used these same ideas to try to make Y-space an alternative to both the exclusive, traditional, British imperial “clubland” and the growing Hindu and Muslim nationalist movement. Instead, they promoted an idealized Americanized Anglo Indian/Christian woman who would engage in civic matters and embody Christian values, and serve as an alternative to the Britishmemsahib, and the Hindu nationalist woman. Despite the USYWCA's efforts to distinguish itself from British imperialists, the secretaries' attempts to create these Americanized Indian women reveals that that the USYWCA supported transforming Indian society according to imposed Western models, in much the same way as the British.

Fighting for the ‘Privileges of Citizenship’: the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), feminism and the women's movement, 1928–1945

In 1928 the YWCA welcomed the introduction of the universal suffrage by declaring that women in Britain were now entitled to the full political privileges of citizenship. This article will explore the way in which the YWCA, previously omitted from histories of the British women's movement, sought to educate and inform its members about the rights and duties of democratic citizenship. The involvement of the YWCA in citizenship education and its role in campaigning for the citizenship rights of women will be assessed, with a particular focus on workers’ rights and the appointment of women police. Despite its reluctance to be identified as overtly feminist, the YWCA was determined to ensure that women had access to social and economic rights within a democratic society. The article therefore argues that a new definition of the women's movement is required in order to uncover the full extent of female engagement in politics and public debate in the aftermath of the suffrage.

KAREN GARNER. Shaping a Global Women's Agenda: Women's NGOs and Global Governance, 1925-85.

In her new book, Karen Garner seeks to propel forward feminist action by providing lessons about the achievements women enjoyed and missteps they made during much of the twentieth century as they agitated to increase their involvement and influence within structures of international governance. She focuses on the work of liberal international feminist organizations led by middle- and upper-class Western women, such as the World Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), because these Western-led organizations determined the actions and agenda of the global feminist movement from the 1920s until the 1980s. The years 1925 and 1985 are bookends of the study. Their significance stems from the fact that 1925 saw the founding of the Joint Standing Committee of Women's International Organizations, which heralded a new day in the cooperative efforts of women in global politics, while 1985 marked the end of the United Nations (UN) Decade for Women and the emergence of clear challenges to Western dominance by feminist voices from other parts of the world.

Engendering a Class Revolution: the Chinese YWCA industrial reform work in Shanghai, 1927–1939

Starting in 1927 Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) industrial secretaries made creating a literate working-class leadership for a female labor movement their primary goal. When the Association's conservative middle-class National Committee refused to approve that goal, they pursued it by establishing night schools for factory women. They taught factory women to read and write while also introducing them to socialist ideas of workers' organization and feminist ideas of women's empowerment. Industrial secretaries carried out a ‘class revolution’ within the Association, breaking down the Association's class barriers by insisting the Chinese YWCA include women of all socio-economic classes. The result was a modicum of success in training leaders for a women's labor movement and, at least in policy, the inclusion o f working women as full-fledged YWCA members.

Women, sport, society: further reflections, reaffirming Mary Wollstonecraft

1. Prologue: Reaffirming Mary Wollstonecraft: Extending the Dialogue on Women, Sport and Physical Activities Roberta J. Park and Patricia Vertinsky 2. From Physical Educators to Mothers of the Dance: Margaret H'Doubler and Martha Hill Patricia Vertinsky 3. The Physical is Political: Women's Suffrage, Pilgrim Hikes, and the Public Sphere Jaime Schultz 4. From Alice Milliat to Marie-Therese Eyquem: Revisiting Women's Sport in France, 1920s-1960s Thierry Terret 5. Eliza Maria Mosher. Pioneering Woman Physician and Advocate for Physical Education Alison M. Wrynn 6. Recreation and Racial Politics in the Young Women's Christian Association of the United States, 1920s-1950s Martha H. Verbrugge 7. Leading the Way in Science, Medicine and Physical Training: Female Physicians in Academia, 1890-1930 Susan G. Zieff 8. Empowering Women Through Sport: Women's Basketball in Brazil and the Significant Role of Maria Helena Cardoso Claudia M. Guedes 9. Strong, Athletic and Beautiful: Edmondo De Amicis and the Ideal Italian Woman David Chapman and Gigliola Gori 10. Women as Leaders: What Women Have Attained In and Through the Field of Physical Education Roberta J. Park 11. Epilogue: Retrospectus J.A. Mangan

The impact of New Zealand 'Third Way' style government on women in community development

New Zealand organizations that are engaged in community development practice to empower women are disadvantaged under neo-liberal and Third Way-style policies of the New Zealand government. Recent research has shown that community development work in New Zealand has been marginalized as a result of partnering with government, due in part to a focus on the funding of service provision to meet government priorities rather than projects that respond directly to community-felt needs. Community development is further disadvantaged by the universalizing of social policy and inadequate mainstreaming of gender issues that has suppressed rather than advanced the place of women in community development. This article examines the effects of New Zealand's Third Way-style policies on women's community development, using examples from two women's organizations, Pacific Allied Women's Council Inspires Faith Ideals Concerning All (PACIFICA) and the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA).

Women's Reform Organizations and Wartime Mobilization in World War I-Era Los Angeles

During World War I, the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense served as an intermediary between the federal government and women's voluntary associations. This study of white middle- and upper-middle-class clubwomen in Los Angeles, California reveals ways in which local women pursued twin goals of aiding the war effort while pursuing their own, pre-existing agendas. Women in a wide variety of groups, including organizations associated with the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the Red Cross, had different goals, but most women activists agreed on the need to promote women's suffrage and citizenship rights and to continue the maternalist reform programs begun in the Progressive Era. At the center of their war voluntarism was the conviction that women citizens must play a crucial role in protecting the family amidst the crisis of war.