Instead of living on farms as many Americans had throughout the nineteenth century, many young women flocked to cities to work in factories and lived autonomously by the turn of the century. Historian Howard B. Furer refers to the American city as a catalyst for women. He claimed, “the total number of women gainfully employed, other than in agriculture, multiplied fivefold between 1870 and 1910.”^[1] By moving from rural farms to the urban centers of Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, etc., women stayed single longer and were able to pursue a wider variety of goals.^[2] Furer contended that the migration of young women into cities was paramount to the success of woman’s suffrage. By moving into cities, women had greater opportunities for a dramatic rise in higher education.

Nineteenth century fears that education might dissolve the distinction between the sexes were assuaged by rooting twentieth century female educations in fundamentally feminine virtues. Universities drew heavily on traditional Victorian values when creating their female curriculum.[3]  Education became more widespread and less of a social taboo because of the semantic distinction between male and female educations. Lynn Gordon argues that women’s education in the Progressive Era was a celebration of traditional gender roles rather than a discernible challenge.^[4]

The classes, men believed, focused on domestic duties – sewing, cooking, and cleaning. In reality, many young
women began reform work in temperance and settlement houses during college. However, these activities were ignored because, as Gordon argues the public could not reconcile “traditional ideas of womanhood with intellectual and professional competence.”^[5] Despite the levity with which women’s education was taken, women flocked to colleges and gained education that frequently led them down the path of reform activism. Gordon emphasized that female colleges focused on “female separatism, social activism, and belief in a special mission for educated women.”[6]

During the Progressive era the women who emerged from higher education often joined social clubs and committed themselves to volunteer work. Women’s work inside the home had been greatly reduced by technological innovations of the industrialized era. For instance, the rise of clothing manufacturing relieved women from the responsibility of producing clothes for their families. Still though, middle class women opposed finding paid employment. Sociologist Thomas Leonard argues that people of the early twentieth century believed wage work would threaten health and morals, take jobs intended for “family wages,” and force women to abandon their eugenic
responsibilities, which primarily consisted of producing strong, white, American offspring.^[7]

On the other hand, if women worked in social clubs as volunteers, they extended the positive moral
influence of the female sex without usurping male jobs, while maintaining their ability to raise families. To put their education to work without finding paid employment, many female graduates joined city clubs across the nation,
inspiring enthusiasm to reform in the first decade of the twentieth century.