Women Creating Change (formerly Women's City Club) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1915 by suffragettes in New York City. WCC is still active in the New York community.
History
WCC was started in 1915 and in September of that year, the club had more than 1,500 members. The founders were suffragettes and were interested in social issues, especially those relating to women and children. The City Club of New York was only open to men at the time.
Founders had a great purpose in mind: "to consider various political problems...and to offer practical methods by which women may initiate, support, or oppose municipal movements." WCC held its first officer elections on January 31, 1916. By 1917, there were 1,800 members, and in 1919, 3,100 members. Early on, WCC met on the 18th floor of the Vanderbilt Hotel, where members discussed topics of interest to the woman's club movement. In 1918, the organization moved to an address on Park Avenue. Mary Garrett Hay was nominated for president of WCC in 1918 and helped organize it to become more civically effective. In 1924, Eleanor Roosevelt joined WCC and was elected to its board of directors.
Members wasted no time in tackling complex problems. WCC was organized into special committees which included those on education, welfare, children, the justice system and health issues. During World War I, WCC created a special war committee where they raised money for the war effort. WCC raised $5,000 for war aid.
WCC successfully lobbied Columbia University to admit women to its law school in 1917. In the 1930s, members campaigned for a citywide Department of Sanitation. In 1935, they were involved with charter revision of the county government. WCC was also involved in discussing worker's issues, in the late 1930s, such as minimum wage and eight-hour days for domestic workers. WCC educated the public in order to allow women to serve on juries in the mid-1940s.
Timeline
1915–1919
WCC is founded in 1915. On August 3, The New York Tribune reported that a group of seven "public spirited women formed the initiatory committee, which has invited one hundred representative New York women to compose the organizing committee" of WCC. That same year, WCC incorporates, forms an Organization Committee of 100, and holds its first official meeting on January 31, 1916.
Members distribute sandwiches to 10,000 striking garment workers
WCC leads efforts to support women's admission to Columbia Law School
WCC organizes, finances and operates a War Service Committee, Le Bien-Être du Blessé (Welfare of the Wounded), to deliver food to thousands of wounded soldiers in France WCC focuses on suffrage, and Carrie Chapman Catt, WCC member and President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, plays an instrumental role in the passage of the Woman Suffrage Amendment to the New York State Constitution, granting women the right to vote in the State WCC opens the nation's first maternity center less than a year after Margaret Sanger addresses the organization... the birthing center becomes a model in public health circles and grows to become the Maternity Center Association WCC charter member Frances Perkins (a future U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945) outlines a plan for WCC's work in civic education In 1918, WCC publishes "Our Hopes Justified", highlighting the results of the maternity clinic's pre-natal work... and exposes the use of unqualified "nurses" during an influenza epidemic In 1919, WCC publishes "School Services for Exceptional or Handicapped Children" and "That ‘Feminized Schools' Bugaboo", which criticizes the "lack of scientific education for girls… overcrowded classes, and too few women on local school boards."