A City of Barriers and Beginnings

In the mid-1800s, New York was a city of opportunity, but not for everyone. For women, especially those with professional aspirations, doors were often firmly shut. The pressrooms, lecture halls, and salons of the time were almost entirely male domains.

When journalist Jane Cunningham Croly and her female colleagues were denied entry to a banquet honoring Charles Dickens in 1868, the slight became a spark. Instead of accepting invisibility, Croly gathered a group of writers, editors, and reformers and declared: “We will form a club of our own.”

That act of defiance gave birth to Sorosis, a club designed as both refuge and rallying point for women determined to think, speak, and act independently.

Dining as Defiance

The first meeting of Sorosis took place at Delmonico’s, an upscale restaurant in Lower Manhattan.

In a time when women rarely dined without male escorts, twelve women sitting together for lunch was revolutionary.

Around that table, they weren’t wives or mothers or “lady guests.” They were equals, discussing literature, politics, and art. That simple act of gathering quietly rewrote the rules of womanhood in 19th-century America.

Within a year, Sorosis had grown from a dozen to over eighty members, including journalists, educators, and reformers.

The club’s meetings became platforms for civic discussion and intellectual exchange, laying the groundwork for a national women’s club movement.

The Rise of the Women’s Club Movement

By the 1890s, the idea Croly had kindled in New York had spread nationwide.

Women’s clubs emerged in cities large and small, offering education, mutual support, and a collective voice in public affairs.

Sorosis itself helped convene more than sixty women’s groups to establish the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC) in 1890 — a network that would go on to influence education, labor reform, and suffrage.

Through lectures, charitable projects, and advocacy, these clubs became engines of civic change.

They taught women how to organize, debate, and lead, skills that would prove essential in the battles for suffrage and social justice in the decades ahead.

The Paradox of Progress

Yet, as progressive as these clubs were, they reflected the limits of their era.

Most were made up of white, middle and upper-class women who had the time and resources to meet regularly.

Working-class women and women of color often found themselves excluded from these circles, and so they built their own.

Black women’s organizations, like the Women’s League in Rhode Island and the National Association of Colored Women, created vital spaces for education and activism within their own communities.

These parallel networks broadened the meaning of women’s solidarity and challenged the boundaries of inclusion within the broader movement.

From Parlors to Policy

What began as social and intellectual fellowship soon evolved into political action. The early 20th century saw clubwomen campaigning for suffrage, public sanitation, and education reform.

Their influence reached from local communities to national politics.

By the time the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, granting women the right to vote, many of its advocates had honed their leadership and organizational skills in club meetings.

The legacy of Sorosis and its successors could be traced directly to that victory.