Wendy Sarvasy, Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activism: How Progressive Era Feminists Redefined Who We Are, and What it Means Today (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2024), 293 pp. $39.95
In this riveting multilayered analysis, Wendy Sarvasy deciphers the vision of American social democracy that feminists in the 1920s envisioned and implemented. She reminds the reader that democratic theory and practice are not static, but have rather been understood, since classical times, as evolving, adjusting to the changing lived experience. Social democratic feminists’ theory and action in the 1920s serve as role models for the current refounding of American democracy.
Sarvasy argues that the social democratic roots of American politics can be found through a feminist genealogy of citizenship. The feminist root of American social democracy is most evident when we move away from reductionist interpretations of historical players and use what Sarvasy calls a “theory-activist analysis.” The maternalist rhetoric many activists used in the 1920s was a strategy, not the vision being pursued by social democratic feminists. Although the predominant view of the struggle for democracy focused on men’s efforts for citizenship (e.g., efforts to not condition voting rights on property ownership), these feminist women were also advancing a theory and practice of democracy.
The feminist social democratic vision of democracy is evident if we analyze their theory and practice. Theory and action are not unrelated, rather they are mutually constitutive. Through an analysis of the cre-ation of democratic spaces like Hull House and the writings of activists like Jane Addams, Sarvasy shows that their efforts were not the per-petuation of maternalist visions, but rather the pursuit of a democracy focused on the common good (vs. self-interest), one where women should be expecting to be equal participants and engaging fully in civic and political life. Sarvasy invites current activists to implement the conceptual and action tools learned from these social democratic feminist “re-founders.”
Sarvasy identifies four dimensions through which distinct groups of feminists were both defining and implementing social democracy: the domestic-public divide, women’s economic independence, equal political power, and embedding humanitarianism at the transnational level. These four dimensions provide the organizational structure of the book. In the analysis of each of these dimensions, Sarvasy applies a theory-activist approach, which allows her to capture the genealogy of social democratic feminism.
Sarvasy begins with an exploration of the way social democratic feminists questioned the family-public divide. She analyzes the theoretical writings of these feminists and the prefiguration of these theories through the creation of Hull House. Throughout the text, Sarvasy leans heavily on Jane Addams. In the chapter called “Feminist Settlement House and Socializing Democracy,” Sarvasy demonstrates how the loftier goals of social democracy were carried out through pragmatic adjustments that would make these goals more palatable to the general population. These 1920s feminists developed rhetorical arguments to encourage women to use their lived experience in an industrializing society to question old theories about family roles and encourage a vision of democracy that included women as equal participants.
Hull House was conceived as an experimental effort where coop-erative practice was implemented. According to Sarvasy, this was a non-strategic attempt to test participatory and social democracy. Paying particular attention to developments with the public kitchen experiment at Hull House and Jane Addams’ reflections, Sarvasy demonstrates that these social democratic feminists called for adjustment to changing circumstances, illustrating their view that the shape of democracy must be redefined. The participatory practice of this cooperative effort required that more educated women learn, in the public kitchen, from working-class collaborators of different ethnic backgrounds.
Sarvasy demonstrates the important role that these feminists played as bridges between movements. For instance, Addams as a middle-class woman had to prove to Mary Kenney, an organizer with the American Federation of Labor, her awareness of class privi-leges and their ability to work together as equals. Their collaboration not only involved the enforcement of the 1893 labor law (among others it banned child labor and mandated an eight-hour workday for women and minors) and a collaboration between feminist and labor organizations, but also instilled a challenge to the family–public divide and a change in women’s view of themselves and their role in society.
This chapter illustrates that these experiments created the space for democratic conversations regarding the family-public divide; the undemocratic character of domestic work; domestic violence; and working daughters’ identity in relation to their fathers, family, and the labor movement. Sarvasy closes by reminding us that these practical experiments and theoretical engagements demonstrate the existence of an American social democratic feminist genealogy that is part of the re-founding of our democracy.
Sarvasy explores how different groups of social democratic feminists promoted women’s economic independence and how this defined their vision of social democracy. They turned care into a democratic value, legitimizing working mothers, socializing the civil right to work, and separating care work from a servile status. Sarvasy illustrates how social democratic feminists explicitly acknowledged the intersection between gender and class. Through stories that illustrate the importance of women’s economic independence from men, these feminists highlighted the important role of single mothers. Through their push for public aid to working mothers and for maternity leave, these feminists helped to advance the welfare state. By strengthening the welfare state and using their collective consumer power, these women were redefining democracy away from the laissez-faire view of the relationship between the state and the economy.
In “Egalitarian Suffragism and The Electoral Politics of Presence,” Sarvasy shows that social democratic feminists pushed against men’s monopolization of political power while working through the internal division of their movement due to intersectional inequalities. Furthermore, due to their efforts to turn the right to vote into a larger social democratic project, these women constituted a feminist genealogy of citizenship. Sarvasy illustrates how social democratic feminists of various backgrounds sought political inclusion, challenged women’s subordinate position, and trans-formed the political agenda. These women were active in the anti-lynching movement, including Ida B. Wells-Barnett; challenged sexual double standards; mobilized through their labor unions; and served as a bridge between the labor movement, immigrant groups, Jewish women’s groups, and African American activists. These feminists engaged in prefiguration, creating participatory spaces that were necessary for the bridging work they engaged in.
This fight for the right to vote was a political revolution: a revolution that challenged the white male-dominated, oligarchic character of the Constitution and pushed for an engendered, interracial, and cosmopolitan social democracy (156). They were not simply maternalist pacifists.
Sarvasy also explores these feminists’ transnational views and aims. They put forth a humanitarian framework toward both people in other countries and immigrants in the US. They extended the concept of citizen social service to that of global social citizenship, acknowledging the duty toward hungry people around the globe. Sarvasy shows that social democratic feminists opposed US imperialism (in both the Philippines and Haiti) and encouraged communication among women from various countries through events such as international women’s congresses. Through these efforts, social democratic feminists contributed to easing the tension between feminist philosophies of difference vs. equality, highlighted the impor-tance of government regulations, impacted labor laws transnationally, included women in the public view of industrial society, influenced international organizations such as the ILO, and supported transnational human rights. Sarvasy ends that chapter examining how these feminists’ theory and action constitute a feminist genealogy of democracy that fostered a reinterpretation of global citizenship.
Sarvasy closes by offering four conceptual tools and three action tools that grow from the theory-activist framework. The conceptual tools involve: (1) an invitation to acknowledge that the feminist roots of social democracy involved people from various backgrounds and interests; (2) decommodification and the enhancement of a social ethic of the common good; (3) egalitarian suffragism involving the pursuit of the women’s block vote and moving away from emphasizing the differences between genders; and (4) pursuing a feminist cosmopolitan view that recognizes that our wellbeing is linked to the wellbeing of others, and that democracy is an exper-iment in which people “join together to shape and advance a multi-leveled, socially just common good” (222–223). Her proposed organizing tools involve: (1) lessons from the earlier social democratic feminists; (2) the need to engage in bridging work between various groups and movements; and (3) forming intersectional coalitions.
The book is written for scholars and graduate students. It is an inspiring work based on thorough research, with a dense and multi-layered theoretical argument that uses historical and textual analysis.
© 2025 Sarah Hernandez
New College of Florida, Sarasota, USA
shernandez@ncf.edu
https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2024.2436229
