17. The New Woman
The period between 1919 and the Stock Market Crash of 1929 “roared.” Who roared and why gives us some interesting things to examine. The “Roaring Twenties” was a time of cultural rebellion, frivolity, and assertions of independence, especially for women. Women challenged sexist laws, continued the fight for equal citizenship, and disagreed on the full aim of the new woman. From working girls in growing cities to flappers, Miss America, the Harlem Renaissance, and women athletes, the decade was exciting. But the 1920s began with profound conservatism and ended with the collapse of the American economy.
How to cite this source?
Remedial Herstory Project Editors. "17. THE NEW WOMAN." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2025. www.remedialherstory.com.
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Isolation, Xenophobia, and the KKK
After winning a war to “make the world safe for democracy,” the United States entered a period of isolation from the rest of the globe. Congress refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or join the League of Nations, and the tone of the time promoted “America First,” leaving the rest of the world alone.
Hostility to immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe and hostility to the theory of evolution were aspects of the conservative tone of the decade. Both promoted the defense of a white, Protestant, rural vision of America. Women were active participants in the effort to prevent the teaching of evolution in schools. They also donned the white robes of the separatist and racist Ku Klux Klan. The Women’s KKK, maintained autonomy from the male run and operated KKK, and had about 500,000 members between 1923 and 1930 all over the United States. They recruited members using coded phrases like “pure womanhood,” “American” rights, and asking questions in advertisements that appeared in Protestant church bulletins, “Do you not want American teachers in our American schools?” Members spread rumors and gossip about Jewish and Catholic businessmen and received a lot of support from non-WKKK members in consumer boycotts against the businessmen. WKKK members also engaged in letter writing campaigns to clean-up the movie industry, which they saw as promoting immoral behavior. They also visited public schools and distributed Bibles or copies of the Ten Commandments and tried to get Catholic teachers fired.
Prohibition
Prohibition was perhaps the second greatest success of women’s political activism of the 19th and early 20th century. Women activists also fought for decades to prevent Americans from manufacturing, distributing, or selling alcoholic beverages. However, anti-alcohol sentiment also echoed hostility to Catholic and Jewish immigrants and the dense cities in which they lived. Drinking was blamed for a decline in American morality, and women supporters of Prohibition saw themselves as guardians of moral purity.
But even the most determined women who decried alcohol as evil could not prevent Americans from drinking. The Eighteenth Amendment proved impossible to enforce. Illegal sale and distribution contributed to illegal drinking, a tide that would not be easily stemmed. Desiring equality, young women demonstrated that they too could consume forbidden alcohol.
Actress Alice Joyce showcases the 1926 flapper style in a fringed dress, Public Domain.
Equal Rights?
Despite earning the vote in 1920, the social and economic landscape for women was oppressive. At the state and federal level, countless laws limited women’s freedoms and economic opportunities in favor of male opportunities. Famous American suffragist Alice Paul went immediately from advocating for suffrage to advocating for women’s social and economic equality.
Having championed the suffrage amendment, she believed the path forward was through further Constitutional amendments that could quickly invalidate thousands of laws instantly. In 1923, she proposed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA):
Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
However, not all women supported the ERA. Some women, including the League of Women voters and notable suffragists like Carrie Chapman Catt claimed that “absolute equality” between men and women would strip protections and privileges for women. Remember, women active in the labor movement had worked to get working women maximum hours laws and federal support for mothers. The ERA was a threat to these and other progressive era reforms, limited though they were. Instead, women who opposed the ERA argued for removing, modifying, or addressing unequal laws one at a time, rather than by a single amendment. This law-by-law approach continues into the contemporary era where men and women continue to live with different freedoms and opportunities. Alice Paul never gave up the fight for the ERA and petitioned Congress until her death the 1970s where a new generation of women would take up the cause.
Women also used their new political capitol to champion laws that would help women and children. One such law was the 1921 Sheppard-Towner Act which aimed to reduce high rates of infant and maternal mortality by providing federal funds for health care (also known as the The Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy Act). Before this law, social issues were resolved at the state level. The passage of this bill was due to the political power of new “women’s organizations” including the Children's Bureau and the Women's Joint Congressional Committee, an umbrella organization of women’s organizations that fought for suffrage.
Carrie Catt, defended the Shepherd-Townsend Act against accusations of Communism by its more conservative opponents. Remember, the bill had provided for things like well-baby clinics, public health nurses, and even midwife training programs, particularly in rural areas that had few doctors. But in 1926 when the bill was up for renewal, it was met with organized opposition. Surprisingly, The American Medical Association saw the act as a socialist threat even though the pediatricians in their membership supported it. Their members critiqued the role of the women administrators in the Children's Bureau. They argued that women and infant health policy should be decided by the mostly male leaders in the medical field. Sadly, women’s groups like the Daughters of the American Revolution changed their minds and the anti-suffragist Woman Patriot Publishing Company accused it of being communist in nature. By January 1927, Senators filibustered calling the women who championed it “neurotic” and accused them of “pathological satisfaction in interfering with the affairs of other people.”
Chinese and Indigenous women fought their own battles for citizenship in the 1920s. The Chinese Exclusion Act explicitly blocked Chinese citizenship. There was no specific law explicitly blocking Native American citizenship, but the interpretation of the Constitution and the 14th Amendment effectively denied them citizenship status. Both groups organized to advocate for inclusion in the US democracy in which they lived. Zitkala-Ša grew up in boarding schools designed to strip native children of their indigenous cultures. There she adopted the name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, which she later abandoned. She was a Native American suffragist, writer and activist until her death in 1938. After women got the vote, Zitkala-Sa became an advocate for the Snyder Act, or “Indian Citizenship Act,” of 1924 which granted full citizenship to Native Americans.
Similarly, Mabel Ping Hua-Lee was an outspoken feminist who spoke publicly about woman suffrage and Chinese rights throughout her childhood. In 1912, she led Chinese and Chinese-American women in a New York City suffrage parade. She earned a PhD from Columbia University. When women’s suffrage was ratified in 1920, she still was unable to vote. Chinese-American immigrants could not vote until 1943 with the passage of the Magnuson Act. Mabel Lee died in 1966 and it is unknown if she ever voted in the US.
Alice Paul 1915, Public Domain
Reproductive Justice and Margaret Sanger
Key to women’s equality and freedom was the continuing battle for birth control and sexual education which expanded in this era. At the beginning of the 20th century, maternal mortality was high, for every 1000 live births, six to nine women died from pregnancy related complications. Infant mortality was also high. Death was an all too common consequence of pregnancy. Perhaps the most well-known advocate of birth control was Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. When Margaret Sanger opened her clinic on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1916, immigrant women from Eastern and Southern Europe, the majority of whom were Catholic or Orthodox Jewish, flocked to her for help. Her goal was to distribute information on contraception in order to help women plan the birth of their children, limit their pregnancies, and avoid dangerous “back alley abortions” that frequently led to death. Sanger was arrested and tried under New York’s Comstock Laws for informing women about methods of contraception.
Prior to Sanger’s crusade for safe contraception, doctors had little advice to offer to women who wished to avoid pregnancy. One woman told Sanger that her doctor had only advised her to tell her husband to “sleep on the roof” in order to avoid sex altogether. Clearly, such advice did not provide effective birth control, and was meaningless in a society where women were unable to deny their husband’s sexual advances.
Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921 to promote her pro-contraception philosophy. This organization was the precursor of The Planned Parenthood Federation of
America, an organization that fights for reproductive freedom for all people.
Sanger’s unfortunate advocacy of Eugenics as a means of controlling population tarnished her reputation. Eugenics was a science that promoted the idea of “better breeding;” however, the means through which this was accomplished was often through the sterilizing, or making it impossible for individuals to have children. Those who were primarily sterilized were those of undesirable portions of the population, typically racial and religious minorities. The theory used Darwinism to suggest that a population could be “strengthened” by inhibiting the reproduction of its “weakest” people. Eugenics was widespread in the US and western Europe and was foundational to Nazi ideology leading up to World War II. Because of the Nazi’s application of Eugenics to justify exterminating the Jewish population, Eugenics was discredited as pseudoscience that disguised racism.
Margarett Sanger and others shifted away from Eugenics to support “family planning,” which instead of stopping certain populations from having children, gave them options and support to control when they had children. Elements of Eugenicist thinking survived in the US, but the legal and political emphasis shifted to providing significant support for the poorest in American society. One part of that assistance was information on family planning so that families could devote their resources to supporting their living children.
Margaret Sanger, Public Domain
Flappers
In the first two decades of the century, American women continued to follow their partners on the dance floor in decorous steps like the waltz. Soon, they discovered more provocative forms of dance expression with names like the Grizzly Bear, Duck Waddle, Bunny Hug, Fox Trot, and the Turkey Trot. Hot jazz had moved indoors from the parades and funerals of New Orleans to the juke joints and rent parties of American cities, and the new music inspired new dance styles like the Charleston and the Black Bottom. The latest women’s fashion eschewed cinched waists and curves for a flat-chested, long-waisted look. In many of the new dance crazes, a woman needed no partner to have a good time on the dance floor.
The new woman of the 1920s wore long strands of beads, short hair, and shorter skirts. She smoked and swore like a man and claimed to be liberated from the conventions of her parents’ generation. She was called a flapper, a free-spirited woman who danced with abandon while flapping her arms. A popular dance called the Charleston symbolized the “Roaring Twenties.” This new form of personal dance expression liberated both women and men from the constraints of traditional moves in which the man led the woman’s every step while holding her at arm’s length. The music of the Charleston was created primarily by men in live bands and on the new recording cylinders that gained huge popularity. As a member of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven, Lil Hardin Armstrong was the exceptional woman who succeeded in the early jazz years. Men may have been the most popular “crooners" of the day, but urban blues belonged to African-American women like Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey, and many others who sang of the trials and tribulations of being Black and female.
The conservative spirit of the 1920s co-existed with the popular image of the “Roaring Twenties,” and the “New Woman.” Her generation saw significant gains in college attendance and participation in the salaried workforce, where there were 8 million women by 1920. Women worked as teachers, nurses, and office workers. While these professions were “feminized,” they afforded opportunities for women to thrive independently. Political feminism seemed to be replaced with social feminism, where greater freedoms in daily life became more important than additional political rights. The predominant image of the period was the sophisticated young woman who smoked and drank, bobbed her hair, and knew her own mind. She was the flapper.
The flapper was young, rebellious, and fiercely independent. Short skirts, bobbed hair, makeup, and lots of jewelry were all part of the flapper style that influenced fashion in the 1920s. The flapper was the ultimate in sophistication, and women, especially in America’s growing cities, wanted to emulate her. The flapper, largely a product of the middle class, was not confined to the white middle class. Her image was taken up by a new profession, advertising, and used to sell everything from cigarettes to radios. Native Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic young women also became flappers as well, and joined in the rebellion against parental authority.
The youth culture of the 1920s featured wild celebrations of rebellion against Prohibition and other social restrictions on behavior. Dating patterns changed in the 1920s and young couples moved out of the parlor for courting, and into more public spaces. Having one beau gave way to dating more than one man for some young women. As youth culture became more heterosocial, expanding the spaces where young men and women met and socialized, homosocial relationships which other eras had promoted and even celebrated, and women who built their life around other women became more circumspect. The closet, in many ways, was an invention of this modern period. Women in this new social world no longer adhered to old standards of modesty. They no longer covered their bodies at the beach, and they happily posed for photographs that documented their style. In 1921, Atlantic City, New Jersey hosted the first Inter-City Beauty Contest to attract visitors to the city over the Labor Day weekend. Entrants were judged by the public as well as a panel of judges. In the first year of the contest, Margaret Gorman of Washington D.C. won the Golden Mermaid award. She appeared in the pageant the following year as “Miss America,” and the name stuck. The “Bather’s Revue” became a hallmark of the contest in later years. Soon there were hundreds of such beauty contests in municipalities around the country.
While the flapper is generally portrayed as white, Indigenous women contributed to and adopted aspects of flapper style. In fact, some scholars have argued that American interpretations of Indigenous culture and clothing influenced design choices related to stance, silhouette, color, pattern, and line. Similarly African American women also adopted the trappings of flapper style and culture. Although Madame C. J. Walker, America’s first black female millionaire, died in 1919, her beauty products company gave women the ability to control their image. The Walker Manufacturing Company’s line of hair care products was designed specifically for Black women, and Madame Walker used her considerable fortune to fund scholarships and promote the cause of African-American self-help and entrepreneurship.
Josephine Baker symbolized the flapper ideal among African-American entertainers. Her career began in vaudeville and took her to Paris in 1925, where she performed in the Folies Bergere and became an immediate popular sensation. She was known for her flamboyant, if minimal, costumes and was the first African American woman to perform a lead role in a motion picture, Siren of the Tropics, in 1927.
A Flapper Girl, 1922, Public Domain
Feminized (Verb), make (something) more characteristic of or associated with women.
Josephine Baker, 1927, Public Domain
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance, a cultural explosion centered in New York during the 1920s and 30s, was a defining moment in African American history. While most people can name Langston Hughes as a key figure, many overlook the critical role that women had in every aspect of the movement. African-American women participated in what was then called the "Negro" Renaissance, which would be renamed the Harlem Renaissance. Women published poetry and novels and contributed to the literary magazines of the period that shone a light on the lives of Black artists. The roots of this cultural movement extend further back to trailblazers like Elizabeth Jennings Graham, who in 1854 fought for equal rights in New York City’s public transportation, and Elizabeth Ross Haynes, whose groundbreaking sociological work highlighted the struggles and achievements of Black women. Graham’s legal victory helped end transit segregation in New York, while Haynes’ [] Unsung Heroes, the first book written for Black children, celebrated the overlooked contributions of African American leaders and thinkers.
Behind the scenes, two women played crucial roles in launching the movement: Jessie Redmon Fauset, literary editor of Crisis Magazine under the NAACP, and Ethel Ray Nance, who worked with Opportunity Magazine, published by the National Urban League. Their efforts culminated in a historic awards dinner, where literary and artistic achievements of Black Americans were formally celebrated, marking the Renaissance's birth. The Harlem Renaissance officially began on March 21, 1924, at a dinner at the Civic Club dinner organized to celebrate Jessie Redmon Fauset’s new novel There Is Confusion. This event gathered an unprecedented mix of Black and white intellectuals, artists, magazine and book publishers, and patrons, sparking a new era in American literature. W. E. B. Du Bois declared it the end of apologetic literature, while Survey Graphic celebrated Harlem as the “Mecca of the New Negro.” From this singular event, Harlem emerged as a global center of Black art, culture, and pride—a legacy still celebrated today.
Soon afterward, Augusta Savage achieved recognition as a sculptor and Eslanda Robeson served as manager for her husband Paul Robeson. Two of the most famous writers of the period were Nella Larsen, whose novel, Passing, was about a topic long considered taboo, and Zora Neale Hurston, who told the folktales of her Florida upbringing narrated the Black female experience.
The Renaissance wasn’t just about literature—it also saw the rise of jazz, with figures like Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie leading the charge. However, women pioneers in jazz and other arts, such as Ethel Waters and Mary Lou Williams, Regina Anderson Andrews, often remain in the shadows.
In addition to their work on the Civic Club dinner, Regina Anderson Andrews and her roommate Ethel Ray Nance created spaces where writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes could collaborate and thrive. Their literary salons and library gatherings helped establish a vibrant community that supported rising artists, showcasing the power of women’s influence in this transformative period.
Libraries played a central role in the Harlem Renaissance, thanks to figures like Ernestine Rose, a white librarian who championed Black voices. As head of the New York Public Library’s 135th Street branch, she helped establish it as a cultural hub. Rose’s support of Arturo Schomburg’s collection laid the foundation for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a cornerstone of African American historical and literary preservation. Her assistant, Regina Anderson Andrews, later became the first Black head librarian at another NYPL branch, cementing the library’s role in Harlem’s intellectual life.
The new medium of radio provided opportunities for female entertainers. The Lady Gatsby Jazz Band was a novelty band that featured white female singers. They sang popular tunes of the day and songs from Broadway revues.
Record companies saw a market in Black consumers. Black Swan Records produced so- called “race records” by singers Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, and Ethel Waters, among others. These women and others traveled throughout the South under the auspices of the Theater Owners Booking Association, which exploited them. Performers often referred to the booking agency as “Tough on Black Artists” or “Tough on Black Asses.” Singer Ethel Waters also had a career in early talking films, generally portraying a black servant and occasionally having an opportunity to sing on camera, as in the film, Cabin in the Sky.
Three African American women in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, ca. 1925, Public Domain
Culture and Innovation
Inside the white, middle class home, married women had access to new conveniences such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines that allegedly made housework easier. As the distance between home and men’s work increased, suburbs that served as bedroom communities for nearby cities thrived. Women’s work was home work, and the greater ease of housework was facilitated by electricity in the home. Women learned of the new labor-saving devices through advertising. Many companies targeted women in advertisements in popular magazines and on the radio. Ads sold household gadgets and processed food products that were intended to make running a household less of a chore and tied consumption to acceptance, success, and social status. Even rural women far from the newest department store could fulfill their basic needs through the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs that promised the latest styles in fashion and new-fangled inventions for the home.
Women entered the realm of celebrity with daring feats and athletic success. In 1921, Bessie Coleman became the first African American woman to receive a pilot's license, albeit in France because US schools refused to teach her. By 1922 she was performing in shows and advocating for more women and Black people to learn to fly. She tragically died while a passenger in a plane. In 1928, Amelia Earhart flew across the Atlantic as a passenger, the first woman to do so. Her solo transatlantic flight on May 20, 1932, the first by a woman and the second overall, was not far behind.
The advent of the autonomous moving vehicle – the automobile, sometimes called a “horseless carriage”-- provided women with new freedom to travel at will, even though most roads were barely paved and dangerous. Inventions such as the telephone that could transmit the human voice, the victrola that could reproduce the sound of both instruments and voices, and silent films that brought women like Clara Bow, the “It” Girl, into the lives of millions who patronized the cinema all broadened women’s horizons by portraying a world beyond the middle-class home. Women’s Olympic Rise:
By the 1920s, New Women were also becoming more accepted as athletes. However, despite the fact that this era is celebrated for the Harlem Renaissance, racism in America remained pervasive. While white swimmers and tennis players garnered Olympic gold medals and media attention, Black women known as "race girls" earned pride within their communities by defeating white teams in track and basketball competitions. This dynamic persisted for decades, highlighting a pattern where white celebrity athletes received widespread recognition, while local heroines within minority communities were celebrated primarily within their own circles. Racism made it difficult to measure the broader participation of women and girls in sports.
The first winter Olympics occurred in 1924. Figure skating was the only event women were allowed to participate in. During the summer Olympics that year, white American Helen Wills won gold medals in both the tennis singles and doubles events, the last year the event was played until the 1980s. The Federation of Women’s Sports Societies of France organized the First International Track Meet for Women (Premiers Jeux Olympiques Féminins) in 1922 in Paris, attracting participants from five countries. The US declined to send a team. Undeterred, Dr. Harry Eaton Stewart, a strong advocate of women’s athletics and founder of the New Haven College Physiotherapy, organized tryouts in New York on May 13, 1922 with 102 athletes participating. Athletes competed at their local tracks and submitted results. Ultimately, fifteen women were selected, including Lucile Godbold of South Carolina, whose athletic achievements would leave a lasting impact on women’s sports.
Dr. Stewart imposed rigorous standards, including a ten o’clock curfew and a strict diet excluding "sodas, heavy pastries, [or] fried foods." This regimen proved effective as Godbold set a shot put record, while her teammate Camille Sabie broke the world record in the 100-yard hurdles, won the standing broad jump, and placed third in the running broad jump.
The 1920 Olympics in Antwerp saw participation by women for the first time. Ethelda Bleibtrey won three gold medals in swimming and 14-year old Aileen Riggin won the gold medal in springboard diving. One of the most celebrated women athletes in the 1920s was Gertrude (Trudy) Ederle. A long-distance swimmer, she was the first woman to swim across the English Channel in 1926 with a time of 14 hours and 31 minutes. Her accomplishment brought her great popularity. In 1928, Betty Robinson was the first woman to compete in running and won gold.
Amelia Earhart 1937, Public Domain
Conclusion
The Roaring Twenties came to a crashing end on October 29, 1929. Women joined the ranks of the unemployed and evicted as the Depression worsened. Eventually, women participated in New Deal employment programs and even joined the ranks of government employees in the Roosevelt administration.
Within a few years, Americans would have a new female icon. They looked to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for confidence and strength in a time of great trial. The Roaring Twenties were over, but the legacy of the “New Woman” prevailed in a new form, as the First Lady served as the eyes and ears of her husband and developed a following in her own right.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. Did women’s gains in personal freedom survive beyond the decade? How were the experiences of Black and white women different in the 1920s? How representative was the flapper image? What were the lasting legacies of the “New Woman”?
