Women’s Club Reflects on 75-Year Past, Looks to an Uncertain Future

Mimi Edgars recalls when 500 white-gloved women in wide-brimmed hats would gather regularly amid the pink settees at the Garden Grove Women’s Civic Club to read poetry, sip tea and plan fund-raisers for charity.

The settees are faded now, the carpet beneath the chandeliers has seen better days, and the remaining 127 members have to rent out the clubhouse on weekends just to pay for its upkeep.

Like women’s clubs across the nation, the Garden Grove group, which celebrates its 75th year today, faces an uncertain future. Many of its members are older than the club itself.

“Now don’t you mind me saying so, but it’s kind of an old ladies’ club now. The young women can’t be bothered,” said Edgars, 79.

“When I first joined, it was the center of everything in this town. We were active in civic affairs, we were active socially. Oh, those were the days.”

Women’s clubs patterned after those that sprang up in the 1920s generally have not adapted to changing times and lifestyles, observers say. The National Federation of Women’s Clubs, an umbrella group for about 9,000 groups nationwide, has seen its membership fall to about 260,000, down from more than 600,000 in the late 1950s and more than 2 million in the 1920s, said Sally Kranz, public relations director.

Members say their daughters don’t join because they are too busy with their careers. A junior Garden Grove club for younger women folded in 1988, when it had dwindled to just five members.

“Women now are looking for something that can get you ahead in your industry, as opposed to entertaining you,” said Linda Pinson, past president of the California chapter of the National Assn. of Women Business Owners. “Women’s focus has changed entirely.”

The fading interest in women’s clubs among the career-oriented is ironic, given that they had their origins in the suffragist movement of the late 1800s. The first chapter of what became the National Federation was founded by a New York journalist as a place where women could meet and organize philanthropic projects without the stewardship of men.

As clubs’ influence grew nationally, mostly among affluent women, members founded kindergartens, built libraries and playgrounds, and campaigned for child labor statutes, temperance and universal suffrage. Many of the reforms they championed became law.

The Garden Grove club helped to found the local library in the early 1920s in the reading room of the local YMCA, hiring a librarian and paying for the first book collection. The club also planted dozens of trees in the city and raised tens of thousands of dollars for parks and schools, according to its history.

In 1996, by contrast, the club gave away just $4,000 in college scholarships to high school students and donations to local charities.

Observers say the club has failed to keep up with the city’s changing demographics. When the group was founded in 1921 with 84 members, Garden Grove was a hamlet of fewer than 5,000 people. Today, it is a city of 155,000 with a population that is 24% Asian and 20% Latino. The women’s club, though, remains all white.

“Korean women don’t want to join over there. They are business people. Why would they want to join an old persons’ club?” asked Wendy Eu, vice president of the Korean American Assn. of Garden Grove. Korean women have their own clubs in town, Eu said.

Hilla Israely, associate professor of sociology at Cal State Fullerton, said women’s clubs are becoming victims of the very opportunities they helped to create.

“When these clubs were founded, there were very few outlets for women. Today women . . . can join the Kiwanis or the Rotary Club or the Chamber of Commerce or other organizations.”

While traditional women’s clubs have been hurt by their stodgy image, other organizations modeled after them have prospered. The League of Women Voters, the Assistance League, the Junior League and businesswomen’s groups such as the American Assn. of University Women and the National Assn. of Women Business Owners say they are holding their own and even expanding.

The National Assn. of Women Business Owners, for example, has more than doubled its membership in the past decade, expanding to 10,000 members today from 4,000 members in 1986, Pinson said.

In recent years, some women’s clubs have tried to adapt by espousing popular causes, such as shelters for battered women, abused children and the homeless. Many also hold meetings on weekends or at night to accommodate working women.

“It really is a fallacy that women’s clubs do nothing but play bridge and drink tea,” said Sandy Morgan, president of the California Federation of Women’s Clubs, based in Fresno.

“While they do play cards and drink tea, women’s clubs members are some of the most active people in their communities,” she said.

“Just because these women have white hair doesn’t mean they aren’t extremely competent. These are women who have chosen to make their contributions not through a paid career. Volunteering is their career.”

Across the state, despite membership that has plunged from 40,000 women in 1980 to 26,000 today, women’s clubs donated more than $5 million to charities in 1996, Morgan said.

The Garden Grove club, despite its active book group and art society, has become primarily a support group and second home for its elderly members.

“So many of these ladies always walked in the shadow of a husband who made the decisions and was the head of the family. So many of them are widows, and now is their turn to shine,” said club President Maryanne Davis, 73, recently widowed herself.

“They feel like they’re contributing. They feel like they are surrounded by people who understand that they’ve been through. It builds up their self-esteem.”