Social Change: Women and Prohibition

Women’s voting rights: a breakthrough with limits

Social change in the 1920s involved more than changes in personal behaviour: it raised questions about whose interests the government represented. Women’s rights campaigners sought changes in law, while women entering Congress—the national legislature—tried to influence government decisions directly.

The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, prohibited denying voting rights on grounds of sex. This was a major victory after years of campaigning by organisations including the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Some states had already granted women voting rights, but the amendment established protection throughout the country. Political parties now had stronger reasons to appeal to women voters and created women’s divisions and new committee positions.

However, a legal right did not guarantee that every woman could exercise it. Registration requirements, literacy tests and poll taxes still restricted access to voting. Black women in the South faced particularly severe barriers, including intimidation, violence and discriminatory treatment. The amendment removed sex as a legal barrier, not every racial or economic obstacle.

Nor did women vote as one united group. In the 1920 election, women’s turnout was lower than men’s, and their political views differed. The League of Women Voters promoted political education and launched major campaigns to encourage voting in 1924. Winning suffrage was therefore a crucial step towards equality, rather than the completion of the struggle.

Work and social freedom did not change equally

Traditional expectations associated women with caring for children and running the home. Women’s wartime work had challenged assumptions about their abilities, and the economic expansion of the 1920s created further opportunities. More women entered office and service work, including jobs as secretaries, typists and telephone operators.

Yet employment did not mean equality. Women were often paid less than men, remained concentrated in lower-paid jobs and found it difficult to reach management positions. Paid work also did not remove expectations that women should manage household and family responsibilities. Poorer women, Black women and immigrant women faced additional obstacles to education and employment.

Flappers became a striking symbol of new social freedoms. These young women challenged conventional behaviour through short hair, shorter skirts, bold make-up, smoking, drinking and dancing to jazz. Such behaviour expressed greater independence, but also provoked criticism from people who believed women should remain modest and respectable.

The flapper image was associated especially with urban life. It did not describe all women, particularly those in rural communities where traditional expectations remained strong. Women’s status must therefore be assessed through both visible cultural change and the less dramatic continuities in work, family life and political power.

Women’s influence and the limits of political power

Very few women served in Congress. Traditional expectations influenced their opportunities: early congresswomen were often assigned to less powerful committees or to subjects considered appropriate for women. There were exceptions, including Florence Kahn’s work on the powerful Appropriations Committee, which dealt with government spending. Nevertheless, access to office did not automatically mean equal political influence.

Women therefore often achieved change through lobbying: organised campaigns to persuade legislators to act. Voluntary organisations could influence legislation even when women themselves held few seats in Congress. The Women’s Joint Congressional Committee brought together organisations to campaign on issues affecting women and children.

The League of Women Voters and the National Woman’s Party (NWP) both supported the Sheppard–Towner legislation. The NWP, led by Alice Paul, also backed the introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, seeking equal legal rights for women and men.

Yet women disagreed about how equality should be achieved. Some feared that the Equal Rights Amendment would remove special labour protections for women, including restrictions on working hours. Women in Congress also distrusted the NWP’s militant tactics. The amendment was introduced but did not become law in the 1920s. A campaign could put an issue on the national agenda without securing its intended reform.

The Sheppard–Towner Act: a significant but contested reform

The Sheppard–Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act became law on 23 November 1921. It addressed concerns about high infant mortality and provided $1.25 million annually in federal funding for prenatal, maternal and infant health education. Public health nurses delivered education under the supervision of the Children’s Bureau, while federal funding helped states provide maternal and child health services. Prenatal care concerns health during pregnancy; maternal and infant care concerns mothers and their babies.

The Act developed from earlier campaigning, including Jeannette Rankin’s proposal for a women’s health education programme. Its importance extended beyond its immediate purpose: it was an early example of the federal government funding social welfare rather than leaving these matters entirely to families, voluntary organisations or local action. Its passage demonstrated the influence of organised women despite their limited representation in Congress.

However, Alice Robertson, the only woman in Congress when the legislation was introduced in May 1921, opposed it. She favoured limited federal government and regarded the measure as an intrusion into women’s private lives. Her opposition shows why women cannot be treated as a single political bloc.

The reform also faced opposition from the American Medical Association, which attacked it as an “imported socialistic scheme”, and conservative groups suspicious of progressive reform. Congress ended its funding by 1929. Sheppard–Towner represented a real achievement, but its reversal revealed the limits of support for federal welfare intervention.

Why prohibition attracted support

Another major debate concerned whether the government should regulate alcohol. Temperance campaigners had long sought to reduce drinking. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-Saloon League campaigned for prohibition, blaming alcohol for poverty, crime and broken marriages. Many women supported the campaign because they associated drinking with harm to family life.

Religious support strengthened the movement. Many Methodists and Baptists regarded drinking as sinful. Businessmen such as Henry Ford believed alcohol reduced workers’ efficiency and increased absence from work, giving prohibition an economic argument as well as a moral one.

The First World War reinforced support through hostility towards Germany. Many breweries were associated with German immigrants, so opponents portrayed buying their products as unpatriotic. Broader anti-immigrant prejudice also contributed: campaigners linked drinking with communities such as Germans and Irish immigrants.

Supporters, known as “drys”, hoped that restricting alcohol supply would produce healthier families, less poverty and crime, and more orderly behaviour. Opponents were known as “wets”. Women were divided too: their prominent role in temperance campaigning did not mean unanimous female support for a national ban.

How prohibition became federal policy

Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment in December 1917, and the states ratified it in January 1919. Ratification meant that the states approved its addition to the Constitution. It outlawed the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquor within or into the United States.

The Volstead Act, passed in October 1919 over a presidential veto, defined the alcoholic drinks covered by prohibition and provided the mechanism for enforcing the amendment. National prohibition began in 1920.

The two measures had different functions: the constitutional amendment established prohibition, while the Act supplied the enforcement legislation. The ban targeted alcohol’s production and supply, rather than simply making the act of drinking illegal. As federal policy, it applied across the states and required authorities to act against illegal producers and sellers.

This was a substantial assertion of federal power over everyday life. The government was attempting not merely to advise people about alcohol but to control its supply through national law.

Why prohibition failed in practice

The law did not remove people’s desire to drink. Customers continued to seek alcohol in speakeasies, illegal drinking establishments. Illegal production, sale and smuggling—bootlegging—supplied this demand. Around 32,000 speakeasies operated in New York in 1929, illustrating the scale of evasion.

Continuing demand made illegal alcohol profitable. Criminal gangs could earn money by organising its supply, and they used violence to defend their markets against rivals. Al Capone built a powerful criminal organisation in Chicago, combining bootlegging with gambling and prostitution. Gang violence, including the St Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929, became associated with the prohibition era. Capone was eventually convicted of tax evasion in 1931, rather than being brought down through prosecution for his violent crimes.

Corruption further undermined enforcement. Bootleggers bribed police officers, judges and local officials to ignore illegal activities. Intimidation discouraged people from reporting gangsters. Where officials protected illegal suppliers instead of stopping them, the law became harder to enforce.

These problems reinforced one another: demand created profits, profits funded bribery and organised crime, and corruption allowed supply to continue. Prohibition therefore helped strengthen criminal activity that its supporters had hoped to reduce.

Growing opposition and repeal

After more than a decade of enforcement, prohibition had become increasingly unpopular. Women were active on both sides: the Women’s Organisation for National Prohibition Reform campaigned against the policy because of its damaging social consequences.

By the early 1930s, the debate was also shifting from morality towards economics as the Great Depression deepened. Repeal offered the prospect of legal jobs in alcohol production and sales, tax revenue for government and reduced enforcement costs. Congresswomen Virginia Ellis Jenckes and Kathryn O’Loughlin McCarthy, representing agricultural districts, argued that renewed production of grain-based spirits would benefit farmers. These were arguments for repeal, not proof that it could solve the Depression by itself.

Public opposition could also affect elections. Ruth Bryan Owen’s Florida constituents voted her out of office in 1932 when she was reluctant to support repeal. In 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment repealed national prohibition, although individual states could retain restrictions.

Together, women’s rights, maternal health reform and prohibition reveal competing ideas about the state. Government could be asked to establish rights or protect welfare, but its intervention could also be opposed as an intrusion into private life. Passing a law did not guarantee lasting reform or successful enforcement.

Women: progress and limits

• 1920, Nineteenth Amendment: removed sex as a barrier to voting; racial discrimination, literacy tests and poll taxes remained.
• More office and service work, but unequal pay, limited promotion and household expectations continued.
• Flappers: challenged traditional behaviour, especially in cities; not representative of all women.
• Few women in Congress; organised lobbying offered another route to influence.
• League of Women Voters: political education and voter participation.
• NWP / Alice Paul: Equal Rights Amendment introduced in 1923, not enacted; opponents feared losing protective labour laws.

Sheppard–Towner

• 23 November 1921: became law; $1.25 million annually for maternal and infant health education and services.
• Significance: women’s lobbying success and early federal social-welfare intervention.
• Opposition: Alice Robertson favoured limited government; medical and conservative opponents resisted the programme.
• 1929: funding ended—progress was not secure.

Prohibition: causes and implementation

• Causes: WCTU and Anti-Saloon League campaigning; religious opposition; concerns about family harm and worker efficiency; wartime anti-German feeling.
• Aims: reduce drinking, poverty and crime; improve family life and behaviour.
• 1917: Congress passed Eighteenth Amendment; 1919: ratified.
• October 1919: Volstead Act defined the alcoholic drinks covered and supplied enforcement legislation.
• 1920: national prohibition began; banned manufacture, sale and transportation, not simply drinking.

Failure and repeal

• Continuing demand → speakeasies and bootlegging → criminal profits → gang violence and bribery → weaker enforcement.
• Capone, Chicago: organised crime; convicted of tax evasion in 1931.
• Growing opposition plus Depression-era arguments for jobs, tax revenue and benefits to farmers.
• 1933, Twenty-first Amendment: repealed national prohibition; states could retain restrictions.