Women in Politics
For fifty years after the great suffrage victory of 1920, women made only limited gains in New Jersey electoral politics. Initially, both parties tried to cultivate the new voters, until it became apparent that women were not going to vote together as a bloc. The first two women members of the New Jersey Sate Legislature, Jennie Van Ness and Margaret B. Laird, were elected as early as 1920. However, after the Second World War, women's modest gains were eroded. Between 1947 and 1965, only 22 women served in the state Assembly, as compared to 44 between 1921 and 1947. The reasons for this decline were related to demographic shifts and the indifference of the major parties to women candidates, many of whom ran as “sacrificial lambs” in hopeless races. A few women, however, did have distinguished careers in state and national politics during this period.
Photograph, Mary Norton and Thelma Sharp, ca. 1950
Thelma Sharp Papers
In the 1920s, the Democratic party in New Jersey was controlled by county bosses like Frank Hague of Hudson County. In 1920, Hague appointed Jersey City social worker Mary Norton (1875-1959) as the first woman member of the Democratic State Committee. In 1924, with Hague's backing, Norton was elected to the House of Representatives, the first Democratic woman elected to Congress without being preceded by her husband. Norton served thirteen successive terms in Congress. As Chairman of the Labor Committee, she guided the passage of Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the Lanham Act (1943), which provided federal funding for day-care centers.
Photograph, Millicent Fenwick and Clifford Case
Millicent Fenwick Papers
By 1970, redistricting, women's greater educational and employment opportunities, and the feminist movement were beginning to make an impact on New Jersey politics. Millicent Fenwick (1910-1992), New Jersey's most well-known woman politician apart from Governor Christine Todd Whitman, emerged during this period. Fenwick, who lived most of her life in Bernardsville, was a former model and writer for Vogue magazine, who first became involved in politics when she volunteered for the campaign of Republican Senator Clifford Case in 1954. Fenwick subsequently served on the Bernardsville Borough Council from 1958 to 1964, and from 1958 to 1972 on the New Jersey Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, where she became aware of the concerns of African-American and Hispanic voters. Millicent Fenwick was elected to the New Jersey Assembly in 1969, and in 1974, to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Photograph, Carrie Chapman Catt, ca. 1920
LWVNJ Collection
Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) was the charismatic leader and outstanding organizer of the early twentieth century women's suffrage movement. She served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1900 to 1914, and again from 1915 until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Foreseeing victory, Catt proposed the formation of the League of Women Voters at the NAWSA annual convention in March 1919. In her later years, she became increasingly active in the cause of international peace.
Photograph, Women at the Democratic National Convention, 195?
Thelma Sharp Papers
Mary Norton's protege Thelma Parkinson Sharp (1898-1983) of Vineland, succeeded Norton as national Democratic Committeewoman in 1954. Sharp, who had been involved in Democratic Party politics since 1922, was the youngest person and one of the first women to be nominated for election to the U.S. Senate in 1930.